


Angels Dining at the Ritz

by Bitsy



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Minor Sexual Harassment, Minor Violence, Other, Sex, Smoking, Surprise Kissing, use of alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-07-12 20:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 50,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19952086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitsy/pseuds/Bitsy
Summary: An evening at the Ritz, told from the perspective of their waitress.





	1. Chapter 1

Beth was having a _rotten_ afternoon. Meagre tips, nasty attitudes, and not one, not two, but _three_ dine and dashes. Three! At the bloody Ritz! It made one weep for humanity, it really did. Stiff upper lip, and all that, she’d never let it show to any table she served, but deep down, she was bereft, bothered, and bewildered.

Until _they_ walked in.

And her manager sat them in her section. He knew what was going on with her, and now her rotten afternoon was turning into a beautiful evening.

“Hello Mr. Fell, hello Mr. Crowley.”

“Beth! I keep telling you, call me Anthony.”

“You know I can’t, Mr. Crowley.”

Mr. Fell took her hand, in an absolutely not creepy way, and patted it gently.

“Dear lady, are you all right? You seem flustered today.”

“I’m absolutely fine, Mr. Fell. What would you like this evening?” She couldn’t bitch about a customer to another customer, as much as she’d like to. After so many years of serving them, she got the impression that Mr. Crowley would find out who had upset her…..and Mr. Fell would get retribution.

They placed their usual orders (four appetizers, one entree, two desserts and three bottles of very expensive wine), and Beth hustled off to input their order and get it out as quickly as possible. A single shouted suggestion to the kitchen (”Oi! Fell and Crowley are at table 24 today!”) and she was off again, pulling down the wine stems and the first bottle from the cellar.

She’d had the pleasure of serving Misters Fell and Crowley a total of sixteen times during her employment at the Ritz. She’d been there since 2015, a fairly good tenure for a waitress, and she was very good at what she did. And in the last three years, after bringing them wine and nibbles, she’d finally realized just how much they were madly in love. They didn’t hold hands, they didn’t snog at the table, they didn’t play footsie or any other sort of other couple-y things. But whenever she got near their table, she was almost overwhelmed by the love they shared, making her throat tight and her chest heavy. It was so uncommon in this world to witness such a love, let alone feel it.

She didn’t hover. She didn’t need to. The kitchen miraculously had every course timed perfectly. She put every morsel in front of them at precisely the right moment, reappeared just in time to top off their glasses. Her other tables got short shrift, and nobody said a single thing about it. It was as if the waitressing gods blessed her after her terrible start, and made the last few hours of her shift a complete delight.

The three hundred pound tip they left her made her genuinely tear up.

And when she was walking to her car, purse tucked tightly against her side, she was thinking about getting a cocktail before she went home, how absolutely _nice_ Mr. Crowley was, how….

“Gimme your purse!”

The mugger had a knife to her throat before she even realized he’d been following her. She froze, horrified, terrified, clenching up defensively. She didn’t even get a good look at the guy before he suddenly yelped, and moved away from her.

The relieved and scared noise that left her couldn’t be blamed, and Mr. Crowley was at her side, holding her steady, as the sounds of a righteous beat down happened behind her and to the left.

“Beth? Hey. You all right?”

“I….uh…maybe?” The last word came out in a squeak, and Mr. Crowley smiled in what he thought was a comforting way. “I’ve never been mugged! This is fucking Mayfair! Nobody gets mugged in Mayfair!”

If her foul mouth offended him, Mr. Crowley didn’t show it. In fact, his concerned expression morphed into a wicked grin.

“Too right, they don’t. Here, take a few deep breaths, Aziraphale has the bugger on the ropes. You’re fine.”

Az…ira….phale…?

Her human brain scabbed over that name, unable to comprehend it in its totality. Instead, she did what Mr. Crowley suggested, taking several deep and dramatic breaths and steadying herself against his side. And then Mr. Fell was there, rubbing her upper back in soothing circles.

“Dear lady, I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice low and loving. “It’s all right, he’s gone.”

She didn’t let herself think about why the mugger would be gone.

“Thank you,” she managed to whisper, and suddenly Mr. Fell had her in a comforting embrace. It was like Christmas, and her birthday, and a trip to Disneyland all in one. That love, the love they felt for each other, curled around her sorry self for a bit, and it was entirely overwhelming.

“Do you like to read?”

That question came out of the blue, and Beth couldn’t help the startled laugh.

“I love reading!” she told Mr. Fell, who started beaming at her.

“Why don’t you come to my shop tomorrow?” he asked, handing her a cream-colored business card. _A.Z. Fell, proprietor of Fine Volumes._ She nodded absently, her forefinger running along the thick card-stock. “I do enjoy giving people new books to read.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Mr. Fell kissed her forehead, which from anybody else would have made her skin crawl, and then they were gone, piling into a Bentley that made her jealous. Her Mini Cooper compared to a fucking vintage Bentley? Unfair.

And then that jealousy was gone, and she smiled as her favorite people drove away. She was absolutely going to Mr. Fell’s bookshop tomorrow. She couldn’t wait.


	2. Chapter 2

The picture she snapped of the front door was slightly shaky, but only because she was trying so hard to suppress her wild giggling. When she sent it to her manager with the text `adopt these hours for the dining room y/n?` and he responded with a crude emoji, the giggles just got worse.

Really, Mr. Fell. One would think you weren’t actually ever open.

Beth had found the perfect Mini Cooper-sized parking spot just outside the doors of **A.Z FELL & CO.** which in SoHo was a minor miracle in and of itself. She so rarely got to this side of town; between her job and her other job and her school work, the amount of pure social activity she got to squeeze in was practically nil. Let alone going shopping in trendy, up and coming, gentrified SoHo. The bookshop was on a perfect piece of corner-of-the-intersection property, the sort of place you’d expect a Starbucks to spoor. (In fact, there was one just cattycorner. And another cattycorner to that, down the block.)

She raised her hand to open the door, unable to really decipher from the sign if her...friend’s? customer’s? shop was really open. But the second her hand landed on the latch, it swung open on its own volition, and she was ushered in almost against her will by some magnetizing force, accompanied by the genteel ringing of a subtle bell.

“Hello, dear lady!”

Mr. Fell was there, taking both her hands in his, and distracting her from the door locking itself behind her. Instead, she was focused on his face, and clasping his hands back, and beaming a wholly helpless smile at the man.

“Hello, Mr. Fell. Thank you so much for…”

The tiny shake of his head was all it took for her to trail off, to not finish her profusion of thanks. He’d saved her from that mugger, after all.

“It’s the least I can do,” he simpered, “for a woman who has spent countless hours serving others.”

Beth felt her face heat up, and she had to swallow.

“Hardly,” she demurred, willing her cheeks to stop flaming. “I-...I bring rich people food.”

Mr. Fell studied her for a long moment, his laser-blue eyes zeroing in on her, hot and pinpoint.

“Humble,” he muttered, almost to himself. “And curious. And lonely. Oh, dear. Whatever are we to do with you?”

“....Give me a vodka tonic and a pat on the head?”

She would never know what precise depth of her smart-arse soul that quip bubbled up from, but from Mr. Fell’s reaction, it delighted him. Her embarrassment morphed into a quiet sort of self-consciousness as he laughed kindly, and Mr. Fell just took her hand again.

“Come now, I believe I owe you a book.”

The smell of the bookshop got better and better the deeper they wandered in. That lovely vanillin, with the stale rot of dust, and the subtle airy scent of Mr. Fell, all hit her in stages, eddies and whorls and vortices of shifting air molecules. He led her down an aisle of religious books, and she tugged against his hand as she stopped to stare at the spines.

“You, erm. You like religious books?”

His tone was somehow oddly reluctant as she stared at the haphazard collection, but she didn’t think much of it. She was too distracted by the aesthetics of the whole aisle.

“Hmm? Oh. No. I’m not religious at all. I just...like the look of them.”

There were several odd micro-expressions that passed over Mr. Fell’s face at that little statement, but she was too busy staring at a bible labeled _**BUGGRE ALLE THIS.**_ She couldn’t help but run a gentle forefinger down the spine, which caused Mr. Fell to squeak and hold himself back as best he could.

“....Do you have any Brontë sisters?” she asked after a pregnant pause, and Mr. Fell visibly relaxed.

“Right this way!” he proclaimed, taking her by the hand once more and marching her firmly into the fiction section.

Beth spent the next couple of hours happily ensconced in said fiction section, a second edition copy of Jane Eyre open in her lap. She was vaguely aware of Mr. Fell puttering about in the periphery of her senses, but the entirety of her focus was on Jane and Mr. Rochester and their doomed love.

So when Mr. Crowley skulked into the shop, she didn’t even register him. And she wasn’t privy to a low conversation regarding herself.

“Really, angel. Adopting another human?”

“ _No._ Well, maybe. She’s just...she’s very lonely, Crowley. Her parents are dead, her ex left her broke, she’s working two jobs to try to pay for her degree...she’s struggling. And she’s so _kind._ ”

Beth flipped to her favorite chapter: The chapter where Mr. Rochester disguised himself as a fortune teller to make a vapid and shallow woman shy off.

Crowley sniffed, and frowned, and _saw_ like a demon would. Yes, the loneliness was a check mark, and she had no respect for authority, and she had a long string of both boyfriends and girlfriends, and a streak of pride about the width of the channel. She’d never ask for help. She’d never show a single negative emotion if she could help it.

And she’d never admit that she’d been ill-used.

Bless it.

Beth was snapped out of her literary orgasm by Mr. Crowley flopping down in a seat across from her, a toothy grin on his face.

“ _Heeeey_ , Beth. What’s my name?”

She went totally stone-faced for a long moment, and pushed her book shut. Gently. And then she smiled brightly, like a new day.

“ _An_ thony.”

“Atta girl!” he crowed, leaning in and taking her book without a protest. “See? You have it in you. You’re just a coward.”

And because she wasn’t at work, and because she was bolstered by Jane Eyre’s entire aesthetic, she set her jaw and gave Mr. Crowley a V-sign. He laughed like there was no tomorrow.

“You know, this is the first time I haven’t seen you in uniform,” he remarked, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Nice Docs.”

“I don’t normally dress up like a bloody penguin in my day to day life, no,” she snotted back, rolling her eyes.

“Oh!” Mr. Fell suddenly glanced at an ostentatious wall clock, his eyes wide. “It’s lunchtime. Do you...are you on shift? Do you need to…?”

“No,” she said with a genuinely regretful sigh, thinking her time in this little slice of heaven was up. “This is my day off for the month. I’m totally fine. If you need me to leave, I’ll just…”

“Do you like sushi?”

That was from Mr. Fell, cutting her off with a hopeful expression. She froze for a split second, and then smiled widely.

“I. _Love._ Sushi.”

Mr. Fell smiled like there was a bright light in his chest, and patted her on the hand.

“Go back to your book, dear lady. I’ll have food for us in an hour.”

***

The local sushi restaurant was apparently all too willing to provide an entire four course Japanase meal at the word of its favorite patron. A delivery driver pulled up in SoHo with three cups of Miso soup, three servings of spicy tuna rolls, three servings of edamame beans, nine different kinds of sushi, and a tonkatsu cutlet for three. There was also a gyoza serving. Aziraphale took all the bags in one hand, and handed over a generous tip with the other.

Beth sat in her corner, Brontë open in her lap once again, and licked her lips.

Mr. Fell beckoned her over to the kitchenette with one ‘come hither’ wave, and she was pouncing on the delivery like she’d never seen food before. She zoomed in on the spicy tuna and made appropriately appreciative noises as each bite hit her tongue. The fact that Mr. Crowl… _An_ thony wasn’t eating and that Mr. Fell was watching her carefully barely registered. She was too enamored with the cut of tuna she was moaning over.

“Now what was that you said about a vodka tonic?” asked Mr. Fell, and suddenly there was a long, cold, sweating glass of her favorite cocktail in front of her.

So, long story short, Beth managed to eat almost the entire meal on her own, and downed several very strong cocktails as she went. She was absolutely snockered less than thirty minutes later.

“Thass wha’ I like about you,” she said out of the blue, leaning into Mr. Fell.

“What’s that, dear lady?”

“ _That._ ” She jabbed her finger near his mouth, a sickened grimace on her face. “You don’t call me ‘kiddo’ or ‘baby’ or ‘sugar.’ You’re the only-...only man I’ve ever met who calls me a lady.” She hiccuped, and reached for her miraculously refilled glass. “You respect me. If I had a pound for every rich bastard who patted my bum….”

(Crowley hissed through clenched teeth. And all over the world, hundreds of elite, wealthy men found themselves nursing paper cuts on the delicate webbing between their thumbs and forefingers.)

“I’m so dreadfully sorry to hear that,” said Mr. Fell, hiding his wince as best as he could.

“You’re always so kind,” she managed, her words soft and blurry and indistinct. “Both of you.”

Mr. Fell beamed, but Anthony squirmed ever so slightly. And it was only the liquid courage of the vodka that spurred her mouth on further.

“If you two weren’t shagging, I’d be fifty percent in love with you both.”

It was meant to be a joke, but it left her lips as a melancholy sort of thing, longing and lonely. And when both Mr. Fell and Anthony froze, staring at her with wide eyes, (or so she assumed, Anthony still hadn’t taken off his dark glasses), she chalked it up to her relationship-ruining ways. She’d done so several times in her life, after all. The problem was she usually ruined her _own_ relationships, not somebody else’s.

“...Sorry,” she managed after a moment, staring into her glass. “I...didn’t mean...sorry.”

“Beth.”

She looked up at Crowley, who was studying her from behind his dark lenses, and was taking her hands in his.

“What do you mean?”

There was a long moment that she took to parse that question, and then she stared at the man like he was mad, back and forth between him and Mr. Fell. And she gestured helplessly between the two of them with a flopping hand.

“You. Two. Are so in love I can see it from space. And...oh! Oh shit. You’re both ace. Fuck. I’m sorry, I assumed. I shouldn’t have. I’m Bi, I get it, I’m used to being erased from the acronym too, ignore me, I’m…”

She only stopped when Crowley put a gentle finger to her lips to silence her.

“We’re not a couple.”

Blank silence greeted that, her mouth open in shock.

“What?”

“Az...Mr. Fell and I? We’re not together. It’s a long story. He’s just my friend.”

She immediately looked to Mr. Fell for confirmation, and the man was nodding and smiling and not at all looking like he wished to contradict his ‘friend.’

“...Bullshit.” See, she wouldn’t have said that without the liquid courage in her bloodstream, and was incapable of being mortified at the moment. Tomorrow? All bets were off.

Crowley snorted a laugh at that, and Mr. Fell looked flustered but amused.

“Okay, I’m cutting you off,” said Crowley, steering her toward the back of the shop. There was a narrow staircase that they navigated with some difficulty, and she let the entire embarrassing conversation swirl away on eddies of vodka. And then she was horizontal on a soft feather bed, and her eyes drifted closed. Yeah. A nap sounded great right now, thanks....

“Well, she can’t drive like that,” she heard Crowley say, and then she was out.

***

About six hours later, she found herself coming to. Her boots had been gently pulled off as she slept, which was nice of them, and a giant glass of ice-cold water sparkled on a cluttered nightstand next to the bed. As well as a bottle of aspirin and some crackers. In short, everything a woman needed to avoid a raging hangover.

It was dark out, now, the muted nighttime sounds of Soho just barely reaching her ears through the walls. And now that she was sober, she was able to take in her surroundings.

Mr. Fell’s bedroom was small, and cluttered, and soft. A corner of the attic that had been hastily converted perhaps a century ago and forgotten about. There was an old-fashioned stand wardrobe, stuffed to the brim with turtlenecks and sweater vests and comfortable coats. (Also it had books piled on top of it.) An old-fashioned mirrored vanity table was next to that, but instead of makeup and brushes and other items you’d expect to see on a vanity, it just held more books. Then the bed, then the nightstand, and then more books piled in every corner. Some new, some old, all very well loved.

She reached over and turned on the bedside lamp, giving all the above a soft golden glow. And she dutifully drank the water and ate the crackers and took the aspirin. The last thing she needed was a splitting headache on her drive home.

The sound of running water caught her attention, and she realized that Mr. Fell was downstairs in his kitchenette. Pulling her boots back on, she made her cautious way down the stairs and poked her head into the kitchen. Mr. Fell was humming to himself, and filling his cast-iron kettle with water for a pot of tea. And then she recognized the tune he was humming.

“Is that from Into the Woods?” she asked, and he turned to her.

“Ah, you’re awake,” he said, as if he didn’t already know. “Yes, I’m rather fond of Sondheim. I assume you are too, then?”

“Yeah, I love musicals. I thought the movie was rather good.”

His kitchen was just as soft and cluttered as the rest of his shop/house, and that golden glow from proper incandescent bulbs, they kind they hardly even made anymore, was everywhere. (She really disliked LED bulbs. Sure, they were better for the environment, but they just looked awful.) (Crowley knew that when he invented them.) She slid into a seat at his small, round table, and hummed along with him as he put the kettle on to boil. _And he showed me things, many beautiful things, that I hadn’t thought to explore…_

“...I’m sorry I made such an appalling ass of myself,” she finally said, addressing the elephant in the room. “I usually don’t drink that much.”

“It’s my fault,” said Mr. Fell, looking genuinely contrite. “I forget sometimes that the amount of alcohol Crowley and I can go through isn’t exactly...erm. The norm.”

“I know,” she said with a little chuckle. “I’ve watched you two drink at the Ritz enough. I should have known to be on my guard.” She studied her hands for a moment, wondering if she was brave enough to say it. 

She was.

“It’s just...it’s funny, I barely know you two. Not really. And yet I let you feed me and get me drunk. That’s a good way for a woman to end up on the evening news.”

Mr. Fell looked stunned at that. Poleaxed. As if he hadn’t considered that angle at all (and probably hadn’t, men could be so clueless sometimes). And then his hands were covering hers, and she looked up into his eyes. They were so blue it took her breath away.

“I promise you, dear lady, that you are always safe with me.”

Words. And yet, somehow, she knew that they were absolutely true. Like, bedrock of the firmament, written into the physics of the universe, twining the stars in the heavens true. It was the kind of promise that she’d never had in her life, all others eventually being broken. (Parents are always there. Love is true and never fades. Work hard and you’ll be successful. Happiness is achievable with the right mindset…)

Her mouth fell open slightly, and she couldn’t look away from the vast kindness in those eyes. She felt a little like a rabbit in a trap, caught in something beyond her comprehension. Now I know, don’t be scared, granny was right, just be prepared…the song he’d been humming ran through her mind, inanely. His face shifted just a little bit, going from that sincere promise to something just a little sweeter, the hint of a knowing smile on his lips and in his eyes.

Beth surged forward and kissed him square on the mouth.

Today was just a day for poor decision making all around, apparently.

Time froze for just a moment, and so did Aziraphale, who didn’t quite know how to disengage from this little contretemps. He knew he’d been coming on rather strong, but he’d just wanted to reassure the poor dear! But apparently that bit of angelic oomph he put into it had overwhelmed her. Six thousand years he’d been on this planet, and he’d had plenty of kisses (and plenty of other delightful human experiences), but never one quite this...passionate. He was an angel of the Lord, and he didn’t want to tease her. But he also didn’t want to break her fragile human heart. She’d had enough of that in her life already.

Beth realized what she was doing about five seconds into the kiss, and she was utterly horrified. Oh, god. What had she gone and done now? She pulled herself back, eyes wide, already stammering apologies, when Mr. Fell surprised her.

He kissed her back. A firm, no-nonsense kiss, warm and dry. She’d heard of this, an old Roman tradition, the kiss of brotherhood. Nothing romantic about it, but still sharing the bond of...well, humanity. And when he pulled back, he had a smile on his face. Almost a grin. In the background, the kettle started to whistle, almost cheekily.

“That was quite nice,” he said, giving her a wink. “Tea’s ready.”

He bustled away to get the mugs, and she slowly raised her hand to her mouth. She could feel her face flushed bright red as she stared at his back, and then at the floor. It wasn’t until the mug (it had angel wings for a handle, oh god it should have been twee but it wasn’t, somehow) was in front of her that she dared to look back up at him.

“You are far nicer to me than I merit,” she finally said. There was no answer for a moment, the only sound in the shop the subtle ticking of his clock, measuring out the seconds in neat little parcels.

“Nonsense.” Mr. Fell sat back down next to her, only this time he didn’t try to touch her for comfort. Probably wise of him, she would have broken into a million little pieces if he had. “You merit all the kindness in the world, dear lady.”

She had no clever answer for that, even though several of them intruded on her thoughts, but her mouth was clamped shut. Eventually she nodded, and he nodded back. The tea, she thought as she took her first sip, was absolutely perfect.

“But you did make a very good point, earlier.” Beth glanced up, a little confused to his meaning. “We do hardly know each other. Let’s fix that, shall we?”

Another sip of tea as she considered that, and then huffed a small, self-conscious laugh.

“You want me to tell you my life’s story?”

“If you like. Or we can just chat about...anything.”

She took a breath, about to speak, and then rethought. No, not that question first, ask a better one. Ah, she had it.

“I just realized I don’t even know your first name.”

That startled him, and he blinked a little before smiling again. This one was almost cheeky, and those blue eyes twinkled.

“It’s Ezra.”

“Ezra. ...Wait, that doesn’t start with an A.”

He didn’t take to her meaning for a split second, and then he did. And he looked almost sheepish.

“Ah. A.Z. Fell. Right. That was my...grandfather. Great-grandfather,” he corrected quickly, knowing the limitations of the human life-span and how old the shop stated it was on the front sign. “He’s the one who founded the shop.”

“Oooh. So you are gay, right?”

Ah, there was that question she almost led with. Damn it. Fortunately, Aziraphale took it in the spirit intended, and he just snickered a little.

“How do they put it? Ah, yes, I am a ‘confirmed bachelor.’” He even did the little air quotes with his fingers, which utterly broke the tension, and Beth giggled. Perhaps the giggle was a touch hysterical, but he ignored it.

“Just my luck. Maybe Anthony is a little bit bi.”

Ezra Fell narrowed his eyes at her, and shook his head minutely. She wisely took the warning, and never, ever mentioned that again.

“So, what _is_ your favorite musical?”

And from there, they were off. The neatly parceled seconds became massively packaged hours, endless cups of tea were drunk, and her hangover never materialized, thank god. They talked well into the night, when the SoHo night people thinned out, and the stars lit the sky. They talked about everything, some things even deeply personal, the whole conversation tinged with a subtle yearning. On both their parts. Her, nursing a foolish crush, and him, so close to being fully human and yet so very far away. Here, he didn’t have to worry about the great war, the ineffable plan, the Antichrist or anything. Here, he was just a bookshop owner and sybaritic gourmand. And he would treasure that gift she gave him forever.

When he walked her to her car, he slipped that copy of Jane Eyre into her purse, and gave her one last little kiss on the forehead. She could accept that affection again, after their long conversation.

“Still at the fifty percent mark?” he teased her gently, and she actually laughed.

“Closer to sixty five,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes. “You’re a terrible flirt, Ezra.”

“Good night, dear lady. Drive safely. Oh, and I do hope we can make this a habit?”

“Absolutely. I will.”

“Splendid.”

And so it began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was encouraged to write more of this on Tumblr, and it's turned into - so far - 25k words of self-indulgent garbage. I won't apologize for having this much fun.
> 
> If you're not into OCs interacting with canon events, this is not the fic for you. Back button is upper left corner, ta.
> 
> I'm on zinglebert-bembledack on Tumblr. Follow at your own risk.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes she had two whole days off a month. Sometimes, none. Sometimes she worked the swing shift, sometimes she had to go to classes, and sometimes she logged in to her _other_ job to cover her rent or her tuition. (She tried to keep that to three or four nights a month. It was lucrative, sure, but exhausting emotionally.)

But as often as she could, she’d sneak an hour or two at A.Z. Fell’s. After a lunch shift, between classes, sometimes spending the night on Aziraphale’s lovely feather bed. She’d read, or work on an essay that was due, or just sit in his kitchenette and drink tea. Either Ezra or Anthony were there at any given time, and apparently the open hours of the shop just did not apply to her at all. (And there was always parking. Somehow, there was always just enough space for parking.) Anthony finally stopped giving her grief about the use of his first name, and she took to calling him Crowley, just like Aziraphale did.

For the first time in a very long time, she felt like she had a place to belong.

“Dear lady, can I bother you for a moment?”

“Hmm?”

Beth glanced up from her usual chair, hair falling across her face, brain still spinning through the beautiful language of Gormenghast. 

“I could use your help, if you don’t mind?”

So that little conversation started her _third_ job. It was unofficial, wholly under the table, and so satisfying that she had silly, adolescent dreams of co-owning the shop with Ezra. He paid her in cash, which she tried to refuse at first, but he’d been firm with her. Almost shirty. The man certainly could get into pissy moods, she’d seen it a million times. Usually something to do with Crowley being a massive arsehole, which he was absolutely capable of. (She liked Crowley’s arseholery, it reminded her of her first boyfriend. Bad boys in black, what’s a lower-middle class former punk to do?)

Her third job was assisting Ezra with book restoration. He patiently taught her, and she was a very quick study. She didn’t even mind that it ate up precious study hours, it fascinated her. And, bonus, she got to read (never touch!) the precious religious books that Mr. Fell collected. The books of prophecy, the weirdo misprint bibles, all of it. Already a lover of myths and legends, she found herself thoroughly educated on the canons. Mother Shipton, Nostradamus, John of Patmos, Agnes Nutter (even though that was only by Ezra’s word, since he didn’t own a copy of her book) and all the rest.

And then of course, there were the evenings that Crowley and Aziraphale would dine at the Ritz.

The difference was, from then on they only went there when she was working, and they refused to be seated in anybody else’s section. Only the sommelier was allowed to not be her.

And that love, that all-encompassing love that had always just encircled the two of them, somehow stretched and warped and wriggled around a bit to include her, too.

The problem was that human nature...was human nature.

“So how long you been shaggin’ ‘em?”

Beth’s spine stiffened as one of her coworkers casually tossed that out in the kitchen one night. Said nasty comment was accompanied by a most insulting glance, giving her an up and down that made her skin crawl. She’d never liked this guy, gone out of her way to avoid him. The Ritz had a very strict dress code for its waiters and waitresses, and for the ladies, it meant high heels and a knee-length black pencil skirt. Since she was very good at what she did, and thus very good at navigating her job in heels, she had rather nice legs as a result. And god knows she hadn’t been shy about rolling the skirt up an inch or two every so often to secure a good tip.

But this? This was beyond rude. She felt like a slab of meat about to go to the butcher, and she narrowed her eyes at the man.

“I kindly suggest you go re-read the packet they gave you about sexual harassment in the workplace,” she said, tone colder than the carved ice swan statue in the reception lobby.

“Oh, come off it,” he scoffed. “It’s bloody obvious. You better be careful, owner hears about it, you’ll get sacked.”

“Get stuffed,” she snarked back, done with this conversation. She snatched up her order and moved away, only for him to stop her again, this time blocking her path with his entire body.

“You think you’re so good?” he said, with dozens of witnesses watching the entire exchange. The line chef subtly reached for one of his knives, while another waitress started toward them, heels clicking in warning. “You can’t just take our best customers. It isn’t fair. We all deserve a chance to get those tips.”

The anger bubbled up in her chest, knowing damn well it wasn’t about that, but unable to call this schmuck out on it without making it worse.

“Enough.”

And that? Was her manager, appearing on the scene like an avenging angel. “Alcott, step into my office. Now.”

The jackass was gone, slipping away with his proverbial tail between his legs, as her manager followed like a thundercloud. She wasn’t shaking, but she was pretty pissed off. She needed a break, and it really wouldn’t do for Ezra or Crowley to see her in this state. They could wait a minute or two for their lamb.

So she smoothed her shirt down, walked out of the kitchen and into the employee break room (just past her manager’s office, where she could hear bellowing shouts that made her smile), whereupon she pulled a forbidden packet out of a side pocket of her purse, and a purple butane lighter, and stepped out into the night.

Mayfair didn’t exactly have a lot of dark alleyways, and the area around the Ritz was no exception. But they had a little walled-off area behind the kitchen for the employees to smoke, though it was strongly discouraged. So it was very rare for anybody to be back there, and Beth had tried to never smoke at work. (It wouldn’t do to stink of it, after all.) But after what had just happened? She desperately needed it.

So imagine her surprise when she stepped into that little walled-off area, and somebody was already out there.

The figure was lounged across a bench, hidden almost fully in shadow, one leg cocked at a perfect sixty degree angle, a subtle tip of fire at his lips, which glinted off his dark sunglasses and…

“Crowley? What are you doing back here?”

“I asked your manager where a discreet gentleman could have a discreet cigarette, and I was directed to this charming little cell.” He took a longish drag and blew the smoke out through his nose, which made him look deliciously devilish. “Question is, what are _you_ doing back here? Sinning?”

“...Yes.” And with that, she lit up her own cigarette with a snap of her thumb over the flint wheel. 

He gave the impression of not moving a single inch, yet still budging over for her to take a seat. She wound up just next to his foot, and she blew out some of her stress with the smoke.

“I don’t do it much,” she said after a moment, needing to justify herself. “Especially not here. But I just had to deal with a….” She cut herself off, knowing that badmouthing her coworker to a guest was simply Not Cricket, no matter how friendly she was with said guest. It was becoming more and more difficult to remain professional around the two of them. “...A situation, and needed a moment.”

“You alright?” He asked it so casually, as if he really didn’t care if she answered in the negative or positive, but she knew.

“Yup.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“Fair.”

They smoked on in silence, and Beth felt weirdly comforted. He wasn’t fussing over her, like Ezra would, and he wasn’t forcing her to talk, and he wasn’t judging her. Every second that passed just got her calmer and calmer, until she stubbed out the butt against the wall and dropped it in a handy bin.

“You did your hair different tonight,” he said as she stood. “I like it.”

“Thanks, I was going for a Robert Palmer sort of vibe.” She ran her fingers through the long, straight ponytail, remembering her punkish pixie cut of years ago. But, put away childish things, and all that.

“Tell you what, tonight when you’re off shift, swing by my place. We can watch a movie or something.” And get extraordinarily drunk, was the subtext. An invitation she was very glad to accept.

“Deal.”

“Here.” He shook a tin out of his pocket, and several tiny white mints fell into her hand. She popped them gratefully, and moved back inside. “I’ll see you in a minute. Might have another one,” he said cheerfully, pulling his pack out again.

So she was already out on the dining room floor, serving Aziraphale his lamb, when Alcott stepped out for his own post-firing cigarette…

Everybody agreed that it was a well-deserved firing, and nobody was surprised when he never returned to collect his last check. They mailed it to his last known address, and that was that.

***

“Where the _hell_ did that corkscrew get to?”

“I dunnow, you opened the last bottle.”

Beth was draped inelegantly over Crowley’s very angular couch, her discarded high heels lurking under his spotless glass coffee table. Spotless, even with the wine stems sitting directly on it. He didn’t use coasters, which was wild to her, and yet not a single drop of wine marred its surface. Behind her, dozens of the lushest houseplants she’d ever seen trembled slightly. Must be a draught in here or something. 

The top two buttons of her blouse were popped open, and she was in the process of peeling off her pantyhose, without giving Crowley a free show. (If you’ve ever seen anybody take off pantyhose, you know how difficult that is.)

Whatever movie they were watching, she’d lost the plot ages ago. But the red wine he was giving her was _par excellence._

Crowley snapped his fingers, which echoed around his bare kitchen. “Ah! There it is, cheeky little bugger.”

Therein followed the sound of a bottle being uncorked, and he swaggered back into the living room, just as she draped her hose along the back of the couch.

“Finally taking my advice to get comfortable, eh?”

“I hate pantyhose,” was all she answered. “They’re the worst. Control top my great aunt Fannie May, they’re torture tops.”

Crowley just smirked knowingly, glugging another full glass out of the bottle for her.

“At least you don’t have to tape them to your thighs,” he said, lips still curled up. “Or wear a garter belt.”

“Ugh, even worse. I wore a garter belt for my ex once, told me it was sexy. It was such a pain to get into and out of.”

Subtly, the volume of the movie went down the more they talked, until it was just a barely-there murmur in the background. Beth didn’t notice.

“You don’t talk about your ex much,” he said, aiming for indifferent and casual, and missing the mark by a country mile. “Was he really so rotten?”

“...She.”

“Ah.” He slithered back against the couch, and tilted his head at her, waiting to see if she’d take the bait he was dangling.

“I loved her,” Beth finally said, fortifying herself with more wine. She hated being wine drunk, it made her maudlin. Vodka at least knocked her out before she could get too depressed. Wine, well, she’d have to swim in a pool of it to get the same effect as vodka. “I thought she was my fairy tale. We’d moved in together. We were seriously talking about...the whole enchilada, you know?”

“Marriage, house, dog, kids, that enchilada?”

“Topped with cheese.” She stared into her glass, gave it a good swirl to let it breathe its last breath. Down it went. 

“Turned out, she’d been opening credit cards in my name. And the names of about four or five dozen other people. I was utterly clueless. Hadn’t the foggiest. She lived modestly, like I did. Or I thought she did. Turns out she was also engaging in a little bit of real estate fraud, too. And she was deeply involved in a pyramid scheme, that’s why she was taking all those lines of credit out. Just the whipped topping on that hot shit sundae. It wasn’t until I was sitting in a holding cell that I realized what had happened.”

Crowley’s mouth dropped open.

“They arrested you, too?”

“Mm.” She tried to nod her head, but it only went back and up as she swallowed more wine. “Thought I was in on it. Took about two months to untangle the whole mess, and an army of forensic accountants. By the time they cut me loose, my flat was cleaned out, my credit shot entirely to hell, and I’d lost my job. Thank god I owned my car outright already, or I’d have lost that, too.”

Crowley had gone very quiet and very still. He’d seen bits of this, yes, seen it when he’d given her the demonic once over, looking for the levers of her soul. But the details, well, those were all new. “You were living in your car?”

“...Yeah. Not easy to do in a Mini, I’ll tell you that.”

“Does Azira-...Does Fell know this?”

“Mm.” She wordlessly held out her glass, and miraculously, more wine appeared. “We talked about it ages ago. He got...pretty righteously pissed, frankly.” She giggled a little, forcing herself out of the mope that the wine was trying to drag her into. “I thought he was going to go down to the prison and beat the stuffing out of her. I think I talked him down, but part of me kept scanning the news just in case.”

“How much longer is she in for?”

“Oh, another five or six years,” she shrugged. “Lost track by now. I mean, they say the first decade is the worst, when it comes to that kind of heartbreak.”

Crowley did some basic math in his head, realized that a fifteen year sentence was about average for that kind of crime, and recalculated how old Beth actually was. (He was never too great at guessing human ages. Infant, kid, adult, dead, that was usually the way of it.)

“How’d you get back on your feet?”

There was a long, very heavy pause. The air practically tingled with the bad news she was about to drop. So, she stalled.

“You really wanna know?”

“Yeah.” He really didn’t.

“I signed up for a website.” She poured her own glass this time, careful not to spill a single ruby red drop. “A certain kind of website that allows women and men to retain anonymity, and still get paid for sex work.”

There it was. He frowned, and shifted a little, noticing that Beth had locked her body into some sort of rictus position, taut and untouchable.

“Phone sex is easy,” she continued lowly. “Drop your pitch an octave, do a little moaning on cue, pretend to spank yourself but really be slapping a package of chicken breast with a wooden spoon. And it pays really well. I still do it.”

“Oh.” 

She waited. Waited for the inevitable judgment that came from that confession, as if she were somehow less of a person for even thinking about it, let alone actually doing it. If this was going to be the end of her friendship with these remarkable men, she might as well get it over with now.

“That was pretty smart of you.”

Her head jerked up, and she almost spilled her wine. Almost. She expected the expression on his face to be disgusted, but instead, it was almost respectful. His glasses had slipped the slightest little millimeter, and she could see the edges of two golden irises peering back at her. Holy hell, he had beautiful eyes.

“Don’t have to be in a dangerous situation, you’re completely anonymous, and best of all, you can do it anywhere. You’re a genius.”

To say that she nearly melted with relief was not a metaphor. She slumped out of that tight posture, and her wine glass made it to the table in an upright position. And then she had her face buried in Crowley’s shoulder, just letting herself breathe. He didn’t hate her for her survival. That was a weight off her shoulders she didn’t even know she was carrying. After a moment, she felt his long fingers toying with the band that held her ponytail in place, and gently tugging it loose. How he knew she needed that was a mystery, but it felt so damn good. His fingers slid through long strawberry blond hair, freeing her scalp and making her finally relaxed all the way. 

He kept finger combing her hair, soothing her and keeping her close. He smelled faintly of woodsmoke and fresh earth, an intriguing combination.

“Thank you.”

“Nah,” he drawled, still toying with her hair. “Nothing to thank me for. We’re all human, after all.”

She could sense a weird irony in his words, but she was too tipsy to really think on it too long. 

Slowly, Beth looked up at her friend, and then raised a hand to his glasses. He went stiff for a moment, and then swallowed.

“You...probably shouldn’t,” he warned her. She didn’t heed the warning. She wanted to be able to look him dead in the eyes for once, to try thanking him again. There was a weird clicking noise, just under his thigh, and it distracted her for just a moment, looking down as the sunglasses finally came off. When she looked back up, she went very still.

His eyes were brown. Just a plain old ordinary brown, no hint of that brilliant gold she’d caught a glimpse of earlier. Crowley, for his part, was as still as she was, trying to figure out what she was thinking so furiously about. Crap, had he gotten it wrong, were his eyes still…?

Then she licked her lips and smiled.

“Dunnow why you hide behind these glasses at all hours,” she said, trying for a tease. “You’ve got lovely eyes.”

“Reputation to maintain,” he managed to grind out, blinking slowly at her.

“Bullshit.”

She really did enjoy calling him out on his obvious lies. It was starting to crowd in on an obsession, to be frank. Crowley couldn’t help himself, he barked a brief laugh.

“You’re a menace,” he growled, leaning into her. Beth melted like a chocolate chip on the surface of the sun, and gave him wordless permission.

“I kissed Ezra,” she confessed out of the blue, which made Crowley go very still again.

“Nnghk. When?”

“Ages ago. The first night you two got me drunk and fed me sushi.” She tilted her head back, and tilted her body back against the arm of the sofa. Crowley followed her. “I had no excuse. I had sobered up. And then I kissed him.”

Crowley knew a prime temptation when it landed in his lap. And he couldn’t help it, he started kissing at that bared throat. She was so obliging, after all! Her breath hitched as he pressed his lips to every actionable spot, his demonic nature cackling with glee as she submitted.

“Naughty, naughty,” he scolded, his lips and tongue tracing over the fine tendons and veins along the pale column of her neck. “I’m actually kind of jealous you kissed him first. You want him?”

“ _God._ So much. Fuck!”

And that was all it took. He moved up, and they were kissing. Kissing deep, and lustful, and hard, two sentient beings who both wanted the same thing. It was the kind of kiss that got featured in movies and television shows and songs, sloppy and wet and drowning in feelings that weren’t supposed to be expressed.

“He’ll be so mad,” she finally managed as they broke apart, his hands twining into her hair.

“He’s not the boss of me,” was the growled answer. “Or you.”

“Yeah…”

It was a matter of minutes before clothes started to chafe and get in the way. It was a matter of seconds before that problem was rectified. The buttons of her blouse were reverently undone, her skirt rolled down with alacrity. His jacket was flung aside impatiently, his trousers unbuttoned with only a minimal bit of fumbling. And then they were stumbling into his bedroom, falling onto his Bauhaus bed, limbs tangling and teeth clacking and breath hitching.

Crowley was a demon, and thus very familiar with this most human act. It could be done as an act of worship, or an act of profanity. And yet, somehow, this wasn’t either. This was an act of desperation, of needing to fill that void they both wallowed in. He made an Effort, of course, because she expected that. (Although part of him wondered if she’d react even more if he went in a female direction with his Effort.) When the moment finally happened, they both gasped, and fell. It was a dance as old as the apple in Eden, deeply pleasurable and soul-rendingly beautiful. They both seemed to find their rhythm at the same moment, their bodies knowing the tempo even as their hearts and brains lagged behind. And minutes later, when she shrieked with pleasure, he hissed in the back of his throat and did the same.

What followed could only be described as cuddling in the afterglow. If you tell anyone, Crowley will kill you.

“My arm’s falling asleep,” Beth muttered, and there was some general shifting around as they found a new position. She wound up with her head pillowed on his shoulder, and his lips on the top of her head as he kept playing with her hair. It fanned out against his black silk sheets, fine and clinging a little with static.

“That was…”

“Yeah.”

One of her hands reached up, and her forefinger gently traced along his snake tattoo. She’d always loved that tattoo, it was so intricate and delicate and beautiful. And in such a weird place! Unique. Like him. Crowley hummed and didn’t stop her tender exploration.

“S’not gonna change anything, is it?”

That was a small worry, voiced because one had to, in this context. Crowley sniffed.

“Don’t see why,” he said. Her body relaxed even further against him, and he realized she was drifting off to sleep. Wine and sex. A killer combo when it came to drowsiness.

“Aziraphale’s gonna be so mad,” she slurred, and Crowley went very, very still. After all this time of keeping up the lie, of letting the not-so-true name be the one that she heard, apparently in her half-awake state, her mind finally comprehended it, and let her say it.

“I’ll handle him, don’t fret,” was his reassuring whisper, but her breathing had already evened out, and she was asleep. After a bit of hesitation (and lingering in the cuddle, Crowley, don’t lie to yourself), he extracted himself as gently as he could. Beth snored gently on, oblivious that he was gone.

“...Well, shit,” he muttered to himself, miracling his clothes back onto his body and moving out of the bedroom. From there, he snagged all of her clothes, folded them neatly and laid them over the back of his desk chair. (She’d find, in the morning, that they were impeccably laundered and pressed. Even the pantyhose.)

And then he made a phone call.

***

The number 19 bus trundled along, making its usual stops, and two unusual ones. One in Mayfair, one in SoHo. An angel and a demon hopped on at their stops, and took their usual seats, Aziraphale in front, Crowley behind.

“Well? Is something the matter with Warlock? You sounded flustered. It’s nearly midnight, dear boy.”

“Nnngk. It’s not Warlock, no.”

“We only meet on this bus to discuss Warlock. His eleventh birthday is a month away, we’re as prepared as we’re going to be. It’s….”

“Angel. It’s not that. I think I’ve done something stupid.”

“Crowley? Oh dear. Is it something to do with…?”

Crowley told him.

Silence. Even the bus’ engine went silent, the whoosh of vulcanized rubber against asphalt faded away, all conversations stopped not just on the bus, but in every vehicle in a three mile radius. Televisions and radios blinked off. Silence blanketed everything around that bus. 

“Oh.”

Sound cautiously returned, tiptoeing in like a child listening to her parents having a row.

“Yeah.”

“That was...unwise.”

Crowley made a noncommittal kind of noise in the back of his throat. He, personally, had thought it had been an absolutely marvelous idea at the time. It was only after the fact that he had his second (and third and fourth) thoughts.

“Why?” The pure desolation and longing in Aziraphale’s voice told Crowley everything he needed to know in that moment. _You go too fast for me, Crowley._ Only now, maybe he’d gone so fast that he’d totally lost his angel in the dust.

“We were talking. We were drinking. She told me she’d kissed you and…”

Aziraphale’s jaw trembled, and he folded his hands in his lap.

“I see. Revenge.”

“No.” He was a demon, but he wasn’t needlessly cruel to his best friend. Or...his other best friend. He tried not to get attached to humans, they were mayflies, they were dust in less than a single century, but. Well, he’d gone and gotten attached to one particular, clever human. “Not like that. Never like that.”

Aziraphale was quiet again, as he tried to believe what Crowley was telling him. He so desperately wanted to believe.

“It gets worse,” added the demon after a moment, his tone getting even glummer.

Aziraphale sighed, and closed his eyes.

“Let me guess, you filled her in on the entirety of the Great War, and she knows what we are.”

“No, but she’s getting there. She took off my glasses, I had to miracle my eyes to look like a human’s eyes, but I wasn’t sure I’d done it in time. And she called you ‘Aziraphale’ in her sleep.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then the angel slumped in his seat, rubbing at his forehead with a perfectly manicured hand.

“Well then. This has to stop.”

Crowley had suspected that would be Aziraphale’s opinion on what to do, but hearing it said out loud made him ache. He knew that they were both in way too deep with that woman, protecting her and cherishing her and loving her, literally in his case. (Demons couldn’t love, but Crowley was millimeters away from a damn good impression of it, sometimes.)

“You’re suggesting we just...ghost her?”

“We have no _choice_ , Crowley,” was the fiercely whispered answer. “Armageddon is weeks away. We’re on the precipice of war. Do you _really_ want her involved in that?”

And there it was. The reason that his second and third and fourth thoughts had popped up at all, knowing that he was putting her directly in the line of fire of the infernal and celestial bureaucracies. He’d probably branded her soul to be sent directly to hell, actually, just by doing what they’d done. Humans who slept with demons, even unknowing, had a tendency to end up in Dis, after all.

He imagined her in the Great Pit, with various menial demons tormenting her, and he winced.

“No.”

“We cut all contact,” said Aziraphale, ruthless as always. “No phone calls, no more visits to the shop, no more...questionable and immoral activities. We’ll stop our lunches at the Ritz.”

That actually shocked Crowley, and he tried to keep that out of his tone. “You love lunch at the Ritz.”

“Yes, well, I _love her more._ ”

They were both stunned into silence at that confession, the angel’s voice thick with emotion. Crowley looked away, unable to process Aziraphale’s expression at the moment. The bus trundled on, uncaring of the sickening angst happening on its upper deck. Both angel and demon contemplated the waitress-shaped hole that was looming in their futures, and they both felt ill.

But then again, Armageddon. If the world ended, it wouldn’t be like she was going to suffer long. But she would suffer.

“This is going to break her,” Crowley finally said. “You know it will.”

Aziraphale almost, _almost_ took it back. But angelic mercy knew no bounds, and he knew he had to be merciful.

“Then she’ll be broken. But she’ll be safely away from both of us. And the war.”

The number 19 bus trundled on through the streets of London. It made all its usual stops, plus one very unusual one, as two men (or at least man-shaped beings) got off at a corner without a stop, and trudged immediately into the nearest, dingiest pub.

Beth woke up at 7:48 AM, alone in a strange bed, with a small plate of food on the perfectly cubical bedside table next to her. There was a note, tucked under the plate, which she unfolded and read first.

_Sorry, luv, had some business to attend to. There’s coffee brewing in the kitchen, help yourself to whatever you like. I’ll be in touch. Ciao, beautiful. ~AJC_

She folded the note back up, and looked at the breakfast. Croissants, a small pot of strawberry jam, a little pat of butter…

And one perfectly shiny red apple.

She did the walk of shame without eating a single bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops early update because of surprise day off!
> 
> For those of you wondering what Beth looks like, picture Amy Adams, but four inches taller and fifteen pounds plumper.
> 
> Still gonna get the next chapter up on Monday. Ta.


	4. Chapter 4

_They were off my path so I never had dared, I had been so careful I never had cared, and they made me feel excited, well. Excited and scared._

“Honey, I’m home.”

Beth let herself into her flat, trying to ignore the awful knot of anxiety in her chest. Instead, she focused on the giant poster of a shirtless Chris Hemsworth as Thor that she had tacked to the wall just inside her front door.

“Oh, Thor, I’m in the shit again,” she said sadly, running one finger down glossy paper abdominals. 

Her keys were tossed into the small bowl she kept on a small table next to the door, and she let herself into her small flat. It was one of those ‘modern deconstructed’ flats, which a real estate agent would have called a studio, ten years ago. The kitchen was a sliver of space with fridge and stovetop and microwave (no oven). The living room had an Ikea sofa made of plywood and undyed canvas and an okay television. The living room was also the bedroom, with a twin shoved up against the far wall. The singly luxurious thing about that bed was a three inch thick foam topper that she’d gotten at a deep discount, and the only thing that let her sleep at night.

But the reason she got that flat was the floor to ceiling built-in bookshelf that had come with.

It was stuffed to overflowing with ratty paperbacks, all piled on top of each other with little to no organization. Everything from Douglas Adams to P.G. Wodehouse to Neil Gaiman to Vivian Shaw to Seanan McGuire to Kurt Vonnegut to J.R.R. Tolkien to Terry Pratchett to Theodore Sturgeon to Frank Herbert to E.L. James (shut up shut up shut up allow her those guilty pleasures). She liked sci-fi fantasy, so sue her. She wasn’t religious, after all. This was as close to a religion as she got, believing in these distant worlds so unlike her own.

And smack in the middle of this mess of paper, stood her prize, her treasure, her Jane Eyre. She’d actually cleared a considerable amount of space to display it, the only hardback and expensive volume she owned.

Her (inexplicably laundered) work uniform was peeled off and hung up. She was on shift again at four this afternoon, so why waste it? She changed into the comfiest pajamas she owned, pulled a carton of ice cream out of her freezer, and proceeded to gorge herself at 10:06 in the morning.

Because she knew when she’d been dumped.

He’d said nothing would change. And yet, instead of the affection and attention she’d grown accustomed to, she got a mealy-mouthed note and a stale croissant. 

And she knew it was entirely, one hundred percent, unequivocally her fault.

She never should have dared to soar on her wax wings too close to the sun of their love. They might be in denial, they might say ‘just friends’ until they went blue in the face. But the fact of the matter was, she’d third-wheeled herself into their relationship, and got Crowley into bed. God, she was going straight to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect warm fuzzy feelings. 

Fuck. She was absolutely head over heels in love with both of them. She wasn’t going to hell, she was going to the strata below hell, where they sent the especially rotten, the people too bad to rate even the pits of sulfur. She was going to be chilling five feet apart in a hot tub between Hitler and Dahmer. 

No contact. She was cutting herself off. Cold turkey. She didn’t deserve to get even a glimpse of their brilliance. She took another bite of ice cream and turned on Firefly. That would distract her for a bit.

…

An hour later, she was dressed and in her car, driving from Clapham to SoHo. There was some grand plan to apologize to Ezra somewhere in the back of her head. Something, anything to get back in their good graces. 

She pulled up into the block of Ezra’s shop…

And there was absolutely zero parking.

She circled the block again. And then did it again. And then expanded her search. And then expanded it again. In the end, she found a parking spot no less than eleven blocks away, and hiked her sorry arse toward the store. She was accosted by no fewer than ten interesting SoHo people, which she firmly ignored. 

Beth put her thumb on the door’s latch.

It refused to budge.

Oh.

She stood there stupidly for a moment, and then timidly knocked on the window set into the door. The blinds were closed, so she couldn’t see inside, so she knocked again. And then again. And then again.

And. Then. A-....

Again.

Ezra Fell either wasn’t at home, or was deliberately ignoring her. 

That sinking feeling of anxiety was now a gravitational anomaly in and of itself. She knew, she just knew, that she’d fucked up writ large, and there was no absolution for her. Her mortal soul dissolved like gelatin in hot water. She slunk back to her car, knowing she wasn’t wanted.

She’d lost the loves of her life. Again. Again again again _again._

Why did she always ruin a good thing? Why was her fate to be left alone, always? Why couldn’t she find somebody who actually...actually cared? Why was she always stuck with scam artists and people who hurt her? God. Why?

Beth slid into the driver’s seat of her Mini, parked so far away. She locked the doors.

And she broke down sobbing helplessly, hysterically. She sobbed as if the world was ending, and she prayed for somebody, somewhere, somehow to end it. Just...just end this suffering, put her in a ten year coma and let her be unconscious for a decade.

She kept sobbing. The world kept turning. And she knew she had to keep going. But she broke just enough to make a phone call.

_You know what to do. Do it with style._

“Hey, Anthony. It’s me. Did...you tell Ezra what happened? Because….fuck, you’ll think this is stupid. I can’t get into the shop. It’s silly, I know. But...I’ve never not found parking and I’ve never not been able to get in and I feel so stupid. Um. Look, we made a mistake. It won’t happen again. I’m just, I’m sorry. I was a drunken idiot and I thought...well, I wasn’t thinking. I adore you both, and...just...please tell Ezra I’m sorry. I...call me back. Please.”

She hung up out of embarrassment.

He never returned her call.

***

Tuesday. The Tuesday before the end of the world. It had been a full month after her abrupt rejection by both Mr. Crowly and Mr. Fell. They hadn’t been to the Ritz once, they hadn’t contacted her in the least, and she was fed the fuck up. She needed closure, and by God she was going to get it even if it killed her. Or them.

She made a phone call.

“I’m sick.”

“I’ve known that for ages, luv,” came the voice of her manager down the line. “Is this a specific thing?”

“I’m sick and unable to serve food today,” she insisted. Her voice was clear and perfect and she had no compunctions about this shifty move. “I have several days banked, so be a dear and clock it for me.”

“Beth, are you okay?”

“I’m not. But I will be.”

She thumbed her phone off, and then followed through with her plan.

She wasn’t driving into SoHo. She took the tube. She had made careful notes based on a slightly blurry picture still in her gallery. Except Tuesdays, it read. Because Tuesdays were the day that Ezra Fell spent restoring damaged books. And he did it in full sight of the street, seated at his lovely antique desk, the blinds all drawn, sunlight streaming in. She’d seen it from the outside once, and it resembled a renaissance painting.

Beth was going to march up to his front door, in sight of SoHo and God, and knock on said door until he acknowledged her. 

The day was absolutely gorgeous, so she shed her coat and draped it over one arm as she marched like the blitz up to the shop. She raised her chin, and she could practically hear the theme from The Great Escape in her head as she went. People actually jumped out of her way as she walked, instinctively knowing that this was a woman on the warpath.

Square your shoulders, think _murder_ , and walk.

Aziraphale was so distracted by his work that he didn’t even sense her coming. There was no blue Mini Cooper, angelically and demonically tagged, anywhere in the neighborhood. He and Crowley were preparing for Warlock’s eleventh birthday party tomorrow, he was already getting his magic tricks prepared, and they were going to...

_TOK TOK TOK TOK TOK_

That was an unignorable, repetitive, and above all _loud_ tapping on the plate glass of his front door. And before he could stop himself he looked up in annoyance.

And met Beth’s eyes.

Oh, _crumbs._

She glared at him from the sidewalk, knuckles still rapping on the window, daring him to either open the door or pull the blinds down in her face. If he did the latter, she really would commit murder.

He sat there for another ten seconds, the anguish plain on his face, as she just. Kept. Knocking. And refusing to look away. Fine! Aziraphale stood up and hurried to the door, a knife’s edge away from just shutting her out completely. But...he couldn’t. The no-contact order he’d given himself and Crowley was difficult to maintain when she was standing right there. And he couldn’t be cruel to her. 

This might be the last time he saw her, anyway.

“Yes, yes, fine,” he sighed wearily as he unlocked the door. “Come in, please.”

“Thank you.” Her tone was Arctic cold, and she swept into the shop like an imperious queen, dropping her coat over the back of her old usual chair. She didn’t turn to face him, not yet. She was too busy breathing down a panic attack.

“Can I get you some tea?” he asked, carefully and pointedly locking the door behind them. The tension radiating off of her was making some of his weaker books go into a tizzy.

“No, thank you.” Beth still didn’t turn to face him, instead wandering down the aisle where he kept his religious books. Buggre Alle This, indeed. The clock muted its ticking, because like hell did it want to get in the middle of this epic throw down.

“Why?”

That was all she said, still not turning to face him. Aziraphale knew precisely what she meant, but had to play dumb.

“Why what?”

The stony silence that met that was only matched by the stone falling into Aziraphale’s stomach.

“Please,” she finally whispered. “Please. Just tell me. Is it because of...of me and Crowley? It was a mistake. I would never take him...away. From you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I could go back and change it, I would.”

Aziraphale knew, in that moment, that Crowley’s warning about her breaking was entirely accurate. They’d both done this, and it made his entire angelic self quiver with pity.

“I waited a month,” she continued. “Just to see if you’d.... But...I just had to know. So I could move on. Because there’s only so many times I can lose my home before I crack.”

“It’s not...because of that,” he finally said, trying to keep that pity off his face. “I was actually...happy for you two. It’s not jealousy.”

“Then _why?_ ”

He owed her that much, at least. She’d accept it, she’d move on, and she’d be out of the way when the end of the world happened.

“Believe it or not, dear lady, it’s for your own good. We’re trying to keep you safe.”

Planets collided in their orbits, galaxies wobbled on their axis, gravity took a leap and physics buggered off. Entire universes of thought were born and died in the time it took for her to turn to him. And when he saw the look on her face, he wished she hadn’t. The Principality Aziraphale, guardian of the Eastern Gate and keeper of Her holy flaming sword, took one alarmed step backwards.

“No.”

That was the thing about Beth. She was kind, right up until she wasn’t. She was professional, right up until she wasn’t. And she kept her cool, right up until the people living below the slopes of Vesuvius went ‘my isn’t it rather smoky out?’

“No. _No._ You don’t get to say that to me. _You._ Do not! Get to say that to me! That’s what _she_ said to me.”

Aziraphale’s expression shifted from nervousness to horrified understanding as she ranted on.

“I did it for you, Beth,” she simpered in a Mancunian accent, high and false and treacly. “I did it for us. So we could have a future. I just wanted to keep you _safe._ ”

It was a good thing she didn’t have anything handy to throw, aside from the contents of an entire bookshop. The temptation was high to grab the nearest volume and chuck it at his stupid head, but she refrained. Instead she stalked closer to him, and jabbed her forefinger into the top button on his vest, right in his solar plexus.

“You. Don’t. Get. To. Decide. That.”

Each word was accompanied with a vicious poke, making Aziraphale wince and retreat even further, until the backs of his thighs hit his desk.

“Dear lady…”

“My name is _Beth!_ ” she snarled, nose to nose with him. “No more cutesy nicknames, no more hypocritical promises, no more lying to me to keep me safe! Why are you doing this to me, Aziraphale?!”

They both froze. That name, that angelic name that had hovered for so long on the edges of her consciousness, finally burst out of her, wings spread wide in full flight. And the confusion and shock on her face slid down the slippery slope of anger and into realization.

“Aziraphale,” she breathed, taking two minute steps back. “Oh. That’s…”

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and she went soft and blank, like a doll.

Of course, that was the exact moment that Crowley broke into the shop without so much as a polite knock.

“Shit, she _is_ here, she...Aziraphale, what did you do?”

The angel fretted and wrung his hands, pacing back and forth as Crowley shut and locked the door again.

“I put her under. Just for a minute! You were right, she just called me by my name. She’s known for ages, hasn’t she? Wait, how did you know she was here? The car’s still in Clapham!”

“She took the tube, you dolt,” hissed the demon, crossing over to her to make sure she was still compos mentis. Aziraphale had a slight tendency to overdo things and get carried away. “And I had more than just a tracker on her _car_.”

“We agreed, no contact!”

“You didn’t say I couldn’t keep an eye on her.” Crowley put his hand to her forehead, and was surprised to see tears starting to roll down her cheeks. That was the thing about this particular parlor trick, it made humans soft and pliable and floaty, but it didn’t erase their fundamental selves. Somewhere, deep down under many layers of mental cotton wool, Beth was crying, and it managed to get itself out anyway.

“Beth,” he whispered. “It’s all right. Just...give us a minute to hash this mess out, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Okay,” she said, in a flat, hypnotized voice.

“How did you know his name?” the demon asked gently.

“You said it. That night with the mugger. You said ‘Aziraphale has him on the ropes.’ I didn’t understand it at the time.”

Angel and demon both winced. Oops.

“Do you know what that name means?”

“Not really,” she confessed, still under that ethereal whammy. “I’ve read too many fantasy books to be objective. But you read me your bibles.” Her voice was level and flat and disconnected, even as tears streamed down her face. “It’s an angelic name.”

“Hell’s bells,” muttered Aziraphale.

“And I’m in love with both of you,” Beth said, her inner self horrified even as the truth kept spilling out of her in that flat monotone. “And I’m so lonely without you. I’ve lived a month without you and it’s not worth living. Please. Let me come home.”

Aziraphale staggered like he’d been stabbed. Crowley hissed and stepped back.

Well. This was now officially out of control, and thoroughly unfair to her. Aziraphale snapped his fingers without a post-hypnotic suggestion, and Beth was free of her mental bonds.

The second it happened, she was on the angel, slapping her hands against his jacket and assaulting him as best she could.

“God _DAMN_ it!” she screeched, now that she was free and remembered everything. Tears were still streaming down her face. “You bastards! What...That’s not fair! What did you do to me?!”

Every time the flat of her palm hit his coat, Aziraphale turned his face away, until she realized what he was doing. Turning the other cheek. There was a strangled sort of helpless noise that left her throat, and then she was just...clinging to him, like a baby monkey. Aziraphale immediately wrapped his arms around her and held her, forgiving her instantly. God above knows he deserved her ire.

“What did you do to me?” she asked again, whispered against his jacket.

“I...there’s not really a word for it,” he murmured back, holding her close and still soothing her. “I wanted to keep you calm, that’s all.”

“Don’t ever do that to me again.” It was a command, the kind written on a stone tablet and brought down from a mountaintop, and Aziraphale nodded his agreement.

“I won’t.”

Crowley was lurking by the cash register, worrying his lower lip with his teeth, and didn’t approach the pair. This was between the two of them for the moment, he’d just muck up the works. Finally, in slow degrees, Beth and Aziraphale let go of each other, and he pulled back just enough to look her in the eye.

“I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“You know I already have.”

The angel pressed a light kiss to her cheek, and then another to her forehead.

“Now. We do have to have a rather serious talk.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Crowley knew his cue when he heard it, and promptly went around the shop, dropping all the blinds and double-bolting the door. (It didn’t have a double bolt until that precise moment.)

“Beth, would you prefer tea or alcohol for this conversation?” asked the demon, still going about his business.

“....Alcohol. Quite ridiculous amounts of alcohol, please.”

“Done. Well, you have the floor,” said Crowley with a mocking bow to Aziraphale, and disappeared into the kitchenette to fetch the wine.

The angel threw him a dirty look, brimming over with annoyance, before leading Beth to her usual seat. It had a fine layer of dust on it, as if nobody had sat in it for the last month. The thought warmed her all through. She sat gingerly, and Aziraphale pulled another chair up and across from her, close enough for their knees to touch if she scooted forward just a bit.

“Is it really real?” she asked, having to ask before the conversation started properly. “Are you really…?”

“Yes.” 

There was no blinding flash of light, no hosannah from on high, no scorch of fire, no lightning bolt from the blue. She had been given knowledge that the entirety of the human race had been after since the dawn of time, and it wasn’t a religious experience. In fact, all it did was make her giddy and relieved.

“So, whenever I found parking here, or I could come into the shop when it was clearly closed, or...the mugger, or…”

Crowley pressed a glass of red wine into her hand, and she took a big gulp before just continuing right on.

“Or any other time I noticed something weird about you two. It’s because you, what, miracled it that way?”

“Essentially,” said Aziraphale, scrunching his nose a little in distaste. When she put it like that, it really did sound very selfish of him, to procure all these little miracles in her favor.

“You’re really an angel?” she asked, voice going a bit reedy and thin. Maybe she’d gone crazy. Maybe this was a very vivid dream she was having and her alarm would go off and she’d be on shift in an hour.

Aziraphale let out a long, slow breath, and nodded.

Still no divine revelations, just a woman sitting in a bookshop staring an angel in the face.

Crowley scraped up a chair and sat at the diagonal to both of them, slouching as always. Beth glanced at him for a moment, adding another thing to her mental list, but she wasn’t quite there yet.

“Is God real?”

“Oh, going right for the biggie, eh?” muttered Crowley, smirking at her. “That’s what I like about you, you’ve got big brass ones.”

Beth shot Crowley a look that was so fondly frustrated he couldn’t help but stick his tongue out at her and give her an eyebrow wiggle. She giggled in return, trying to keep herself at least a little grounded.

“Yes,” said Aziraphale after a moment, when her giggles die down. Which, yeah. Gulp. Her mouth flooded with sour saliva as she realized that this was literally the fabric of reality she was peeking under here, treading places the human mind shouldn’t go. She mentally backed away from that cliff’s edge and went smaller.

“Do you have wings?”

“Oh yes.” Aziraphale actually smiled at her, that cat in the cream smile that was her undoing.

“Can I...see them?”

Aziraphale glanced around, to make sure that Crowley had gotten all the windows covered. As if he knew that this was going to be a topic of conversation and gotten them privacy from the start. Bless him.

“Very well.”

He stood, centered himself in the clearest part of the bookshop, and rolled his neck once. And then they were there. Snow white wings stretching out, not a feather out of place, almost glowing with ethereal goodness. Aziraphale let out a sigh that she usually only heard from him after a particularly delicious dish.

“Blimey,” she whispered, her accent slipping a little. (She would not have used that particular slang word if she knew its etymology.) She swallowed, and carefully angled her head so she could see if they were just...clipped on somewhere? Nope, they were definitely coming out of his shoulders. She sat on her hands to keep from touching those flawless, shining wings.

“So...so why are you here? On Earth? Shouldn’t you two be up there? Playing harps or something?”

“That is a crude stereotype,” said Aziraphale scoldingly, winching his wings back in and tucking them away. “And I strongly object to it.”

“And I wouldn’t be up there anyway.”

Crowley said it so low and slow that it took a moment for his meaning to sink in. Her eyes went wide, and she turned to him, just as he slipped his sunglasses off.

Gold. Gold and gorgeous and _he had slitted pupils._

“I’m with the...downstairs contingent.” He pointed down, even as she stared at his eyes helplessly. Then she twigged.

“You’re a demon,” she breathed. “You’re an angel and you’re a demon and you’re best friends and you dine at the Ritz and drive a Bentley and own a bookshop and _oh my god I shagged a demon._ ”

It had started off slow and normal, but with every passing sentence fragment she got faster and faster, until that last bit came out in something resembling the voice overs in Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Aziraphale scooted forward and took her hands, carefully removing her wine glass and putting it down before she hurt herself. (Or splashed wine on his books.) 

“Deep breath,” he murmured. “That’s it, in and out.”

She huffed several long, slow breaths in through her diaphragm, and then gave that up as a bad job and dropped her head between her knees. Through it, Aziraphale kept rubbing her upper back, comforting her and exchanging glances with his demonic counterpart.

Beth was, at heart, a practical sort of soul. She knew that hysterics helped for a moment, and then you had to square up, stiff upper lip, and get on with it. Once upon a time, she’d strongly considered getting a ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ tattoo. (The only reason she hadn’t was her visceral aversion to needles. And also it was tacky.) (She limited it to one t-shirt.) So, eventually, she managed to get herself under control, and sat back up slowly.

“...Right. Okay. So. And this is crucial because, if you lie to me again I’ll figure out a way to do something drastic to an angel and a demon but...what are you trying to keep me safe from?”

So they told her.

It took quite some time, and another bottle of wine was opened, and Crowley had to keep Aziraphale on track several times (the angel was very fond of sidebars and footnotes). But eventually, they came to the present day of their six thousand year slow burn, and waited for her to run screaming.

“So...the Antichrist is here and the world’s going to end.”

“Yup.”

“And you two have been trying to raise the boy to be...not the Antichrist.”

“Indeed.”

“And tomorrow is his eleventh birthday, which you’re both attending, to keep an eye out for a hellhound, which, if the boy names it, it means we’re all doomed.”

“Exactly.”

There was a moment where the world seemed to pause, the balance weighed in the mind of a waitress from Clapham. And then…

“How can I help?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> High-ho, follow me on tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack.


	5. Chapter 5

Miraculously, the catering staff needed two more people, and the entertainment came down with a tummy bug. Her manager at the Ritz told her to take the next few days off, since she was still ill. Fully paid, don’t fret.

Beth tried not to feel guilty that she was banking her sick pay at the same time she was getting paid by this very professional catering company. She and Crowley were in the all white uniforms, and she straightened his tie before they got out of the Bentley. (Aziraphale was over on the grounds proper, supervising the people putting together his pavilion.)

“Weird to see you all in white,” she whispered to him.

“Weird to see you like this here, and not at the Ritz.”

He tilted his face down and peered at her over his glasses. That gorgeous gold glinted at her, and she felt her pulse pick up.

“Remember, when the hellhound shows…”

“Hop it to the Bentley and lock the doors, I know.”

“Atta girl. Okay, see you on the other side.”

The American Ambassador’s official residence was a rather nice one, but she could see the infernal and angelic influences all over the place, now that she knew what she was looking for. Glassy-eyed staff, a perfectly blooming garden (she wasn’t sure if it was Aziraphale or Crowley who was responsible for that), parents neglectful enough to not be brought on charges but capable of ignoring who was _actually_ raising their boy.

She moved with a confidence and ease that spoke of her professionalism, although wearing heels on a grass lawn sucked. And that’s when she got a good look at this Warlock. This Antichrist. The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of This World, Spawn of Satan.

He was playing Fortnite on his phone.

The poor kid was having his birthday party, surrounded on all sides by what were supposed to be his friends and loved ones, and he’d rather play Fortnite.

Hmm.

For the next few hours, she was too busy setting up and serving food to really keep an eye on the kid, or Aziraphale, but she and Crowley bumped into each other every twenty minutes or so. He put in just enough effort to look busy, but wasn’t actually doing any real work.

Git. He gave her a knowing smirk and just kept on doing it.

Eventually, Thaddeus Dowling himself was there, personally thanking the catering staff and giving them all these weird colorful coins as a tip. (She found out later it was a commemorative coin celebrating the bicentennial of the United States, and was worth precisely twenty-five American cents. She threw it away.)

That was when “The Astounding Mr. Phell!” took the stage.

She and Crowley ended up shoulder to shoulder, both watching in horrified fascination as the greatest train wreck in the history of the world played out in slow motion on the stage. 

“I told him not to,” sighed Crowley. 

“Oh, Jesus. This. This is…”

“Bad. The word you’re looking for is bad.”

“So. So bad.”

Part of her wanted to slink back to the Bentley, lower herself into the trunk, and die from sheer second-hand embarrassment. This was the man-...angel she was in love with. He’d even drawn on a false mustache. She wanted to march up there with a wet wipe and malice aforethought.

Crowley eventually grew tired of this sport, and kept glancing at his watch. The tween heckling that Aziraphale so richly deserved began, a full-throated verbal arse-kicking.

And still, there was no enormous dog loping its way into the party.

When the cakes and creams started flying, that was the end of that particular shitshow. Crowley managed to make it out of the pavilion utterly spotless, but both Beth and Aziraphale looked like they’d just stepped out of an exploded bakery. They reconvened at the Bentley, as Crowley kept looking at his watch and glancing around anxiously.

“Ugh, it’s sticky _everywhere_ ,” whinged Beth, trying to pick raspberry jam out of her strawberry hair. Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and they were both clean. “ _Thank_ you.”

“That was...rather a disaster,” Aziraphale said, pulling a dead dove out of his sleeve.

“It’s late,” said Crowley.

“It’s fine, it just needs a…” Aziraphale revived the dove with a touch, and it cooed angrily at the angel before flying off.

“Not the dove! The dog. The hellhound was supposed to be here by now.”

“Is that bad?” asked Beth. “Maybe Hell didn’t release it after all.”

Crowley looked thoughtful at that, and then slid into the Bentley and turned on the radio. The first cheerful beats of “Fat Bottomed Girls” sounded for a moment, and then it morphed into a hideous screeching. 

_Hello, Crowley._ It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, infernal and threatening. (Beth didn’t know that this was actually a very polite greeting, by Hell’s standards.) _What’s wrong?_

“Erm, hi, who’s this?” 

_Dagon, lord of the files, master of madness, underduke of the seven torments. What can I do for you?_

“Okaaay, yeah, great, just checking in about the hellhound.”

_It was released ten minutes ago. It should be with the boy now. Why? Has something gone wrong, Crowley?_

The demon looked panicked, and started cheerfully lying his lips off.

“Ah, no, nope, everything’s fine, just a bit of temporal delay, I see it now, good dog, _nice_ dog, gosh, what a frightfully hellish hound, you’re doing a great job down there, good bye.”

He snapped the radio off before Dagon could respond. Human, angel and demon all exchanged a glance.

“No dog.”

“No dog.”

“...Wrong boy.”

“Wrong boy.”

“Wrong boy?! You two spent eleven years raising the wrong kid as the Antichrist?!”

A pause, and then both of them were looking extremely uncomfortable. Beth buried her face in her hands.

“Oh my god, we’re all going to die.”

***

The drive from Belgravia to SoHo shouldn’t have been remarkable, but Crowley loved to make a splash. The Bentley roared through London at ninety-one miles per hour, a speed which caused Aziraphale to panic and Beth to chuckle to herself. What was the point, after all, of owning a Bentley and being a demon if you couldn’t speed to your heart’s content?

“Crowley! Might I remind you we have a _human being_ in your backseat?”

“She doesn’t mind. Do you?” the demon asked, glancing at her in his rearview.

“Not at all.” Although she did double check that her seatbelt was buckled. She might die of whiplash, but what a way to go. “You drive like my first boyfriend. It’s a little fun, to be honest.”

“See? She’s fine.”

“You’re a maniac,” moaned the angel. 

When the three of them settled down in the bookshop, Beth peeled off her uniform and the lads miracled themselves into their usual togs.

“Now what?” she asked, throwing aside her jacket.

“Not sure,” said Crowley. “A good night’s sleep for us, at least.”

“Good idea. I’m fucking exhausted.”

“Beth dear, I do wish you wouldn’t swear,” said Aziraphale, frowning as he shrugged out of his coat.

“Aziraphale, I am a creature of the lower class,” she said, her actual accent coming out. “I’m going to swear and you’ll just have to deal with it.”

Aziraphale boggled. Crowley started laughing, and shook his head.

“Tell him what you’re getting your degree in, luv,” he said, pulling off his dark glasses.

“Speech and vocal therapy.”

“Oh. Oh!”

“Somebody like me can’t get a job at the Ritz without some sort of accent correction,” she said, and Aziraphale boggled again at how easily she could turn it on and off. “I spent a hell of a lot of time correcting it.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” said the angel, wistfully.

“Yeah, well, that’s life. Anyway, after going through it, I got interested, and started for my degree.”

Crowley was already busying himself with getting the wine for them, by unspoken agreement. They’d lost the Antichrist. If that didn’t call for mind-bubbling amounts of alcohol, then what did? Beth, meanwhile, raided Aziraphale’s wardrobe, and found a pair of his pyjamas. The trousers were too big, so she ended up in just the top, curled up in her usual chair with bare legs. Both angel and demon pretended to ignore that.

“So, seriously, now what?” she asked, sipping on her (always oh so very excellent) wine. “Aside from sleep and food. You’ve lost the Antichrist.”

“He lost the Antichrist,” said the angel with a pointed finger. Crowley rolled his yellow eyes.

“ _We’ve_ lost it.”

“A child has been lost. We just need to figure out how to find him again.”

They all fell silent as they contemplated that, the enormity of the task. If that Warlock boy wasn’t the genuine article, there could be thousands, millions of eleven year old boys they would have to comb through, and they didn’t have the time. That’s when Crowley went all stiff and shivery, his tongue poking through his teeth.

“Something’s changed.” He actually sniffed this time, and Aziraphale blushed.

“It’s a new cologne.”

“I know what _you_ smell like!” 

Beth snickered into her wine.

“The hellhound has found its master.”

Beth’s green eyes went very wide indeed.

“Are you sure?”

“Would I lie to you?”

“Well, you are a demon,” said Aziraphale archly. “That is what you do.”

“Not this time. It’s happened. We’re doomed.”

They all exchanged a glance, and Beth found herself, stupidly, thinking of her schooling. She’d never get that degree now, never get married, never have a child. She’d never get to go to the shore again, or to France, or to America. On the plus side, at least her student loans would be forgiven. (Or so she hoped, she wouldn’t put it past the collection agencies to follow her into hell to continue their torment.)

No more pints down the pub. No more cozy reading binges at the shop. She’d miss out on the next season of Black Mirror. No more dinners at the Ritz. No more Mini Cooper or Bentley.

No more Aziraphale or Crowley.

“Welcome to the end times.”

Hysterics seemed rather out of place, frankly. It was easy to have hysterics over being dumped by a lover, or finding out said lover was a demon. The end of the world? It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t happen. Her brain simply couldn’t encompass it.

Unfolding herself from the chair, she filled up her glass of wine again, and squared her jaw.

“Bullshit.”

Angel and demon glanced up at her, and she narrowed her eyes at them.

“You’re both impossible,” she declared. “I’m not going to give up hope and pretend there’s nothing to do. It’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings, after all. Aziraphale, can I spend the night again?”

“Of course,” he answered immediately, kindly, before glancing at Crowley. “I’m not letting you stay the night at his place anymore, I know what you’ll get up to.” It was catty, but well-intentioned, and Crowley made a sort of a verbal keysmash sound with his actual mouth.

“Oh? Jealous, angel?” she shot back, causing Aziraphale to turn the precise same shade of red as a cherry tomato. “You could have your turn, you’re just afraid.”

“Beth!” Aziraphale looked as if he was about to double over in embarrassment, and Crowley laughed like a drain. “I don’t...no!”

“Your loss,” she shrugged, as if the rejection didn’t sting just a little still. “Sorry, Crowley, you’ve been cockblocked again.”

“Story of my entire blessed existence,” the demon said with a sigh. “Keep an eye on her, angel.”

Crowley snapped his dark glasses back onto his face and stalked out into the night, making SoHo twenty-seven percent more interesting just by being there. Angel and human listened to the sound of the Bentley roaring off into the night, and then it was gone.

She and Aziraphale went about the business of making sure everything was turned off, and then they both went up to the loft flat above the shop. Every other time she’d spent the night, Aziraphale had begged off with some excuse, but tonight, he was headed to the bed with her. She gaped at him, and then cocked an eyebrow in question.

“We’re sharing tonight, huh?”

“I don’t need to sleep,” he murmured gently. “I don’t mind sharing the bed. I’ll sit and read.”

“...Thank you.”

So they both ended up in the enormous feather bed, him sitting up and reading, and her falling asleep with her arm thrown across his lap and her face smushed into his side. When he was sure she was fully asleep, he brushed his fingers through her long hair, and smiled helplessly.

***

Aziraphale had miracled Beth a whole new outfit the next morning (after three or four rejections because she _simply would not wear tartan thank you_ ). And after serving her breakfast and tea, he decided to open the shop to the public. The world might be ending, certainly, but he was a pillar of the community. (He really was not.)

She was curled up in her usual chair, so close to the back room and kitchenette, a copy of Pride and Prejudice open under her nose. So she was in the perfect observation perch when they walked in.

The short one grabbed her attention first. He was the very model of a modern major paedophile. Everything about him set her teeth on edge, from his bold sartorial choices to the way his eyebrows seemed to stand straight up like a character from Dune. But the other one.

The other one.

He made her feel cold and clammy all over.

He was handsome like a granite cliff was handsome, all crags and cold surfaces. He was cheerful, like a funeral notice was cheerful. He was well dressed, like a mannequin in Herrod’s. His eyes were purple, purple like a suffocated face. And he was marching his way into Aziraphale’s shop like he owned the joint.

Aziraphale looked like he wanted to burst into tears, even as he hustled toward those two creeps.

“Can I help you?” he asked in a high, false tone, his eyes wide and afraid. She’d never seen Aziraphale afraid, not once. It made her heart skip a beat.

“We’re here to buy your material objects!” proclaimed the Granite Face.

“Books,” hissed the paedophile. 

That’s what really got her attention. She pretended to be absorbed in her Austen, but was watching these two as closely as she could.

“Books!” That was another granite proclamation, face contorting into a rictus smile. “Let us discuss my purchase in a private place, please! Because I am purchasing _pornography!_ ”

It took every single ounce of Beth’s considerable willpower to not collapse with wheezing laughter.

“Well, erm.” Aziraphale’s eyes darted to his waitress, telegraphing every emotion there, and she stopped being amused, her mouth dropping open. This was beyond fear. This was abject terror. “Let’s step into my back room.”

“We humans are easily embarrassed,” said the paedophile. “We must buy our pornography in secret.”

Beth waited until the three were out of sight, and buried her face in her hands. Fucking hell. Those two had to be demons, here to torture or blackmail Aziraphale. They both set off her (admittedly lacking) skeeve alarms. And her angel was so _frightened._ She wanted to run into the room and pull him into a hug, and tell those creeps to buzz right the fuck off. But she got the impression that would just make Aziraphale more upset. 

Her chair was close to the back room, but not close enough to make out the conversation. Still she tried to hear it. It wasn’t until Granite Face yelled out _THANK YOU FOR MY PORNOGRAPHY_ that she heard anything at all.

Frustrated, she started rummaging around in her pockets for her cell phone to text Crowley and tell him what was up, only to realize she’d left it upstairs in her purse. Damn it. Carefully, she put her book down and made her way to the stairs leading to Aziraphale’s loft. The two demons had their backs to her, but Aziraphale saw her, and his expression was beyond alarmed, as he minutely shook his head no at her.

She nodded once at him and then turned to the stairs.

Standing at the foot of them was Granite Face. He towered over her, and had the most condescending smile on his face as those purple eyes bored into her soul. She froze on the spot, and had to wrangle her traitorous body out of taking several steps back from this threat.

“I saw you reading over there,” he said in an American accent. Of course this demon was American. “What were you reading, kiddo?”

Kiddo. Oooooh. No.

She stared blankly at him for a moment, and then gave him a big, brilliant, fuck-off smile.

“How to Remove a Man’s Testicles With Nothing But A Spoon,” she declared, still smiling. “It’s _quite_ edifying.”

“Well then!” squeaked Aziraphale, ushering Granite Face and Major Paedophile toward the front door. Beth used the opportunity to run upstairs while they weren’t looking. “So lovely to see you, gentlemen, come ‘round any time, farewell…”

“Wait...was that woman threatening me?”

That was the last she heard as she finally got upstairs, and less than thirty seconds later, the rest of the shop was empty and Aziraphale was rushing his panicked way up to his bedroom.

“Beth!” he moaned, already in quite a tizzy. “What were you thinking? That was the _Archangel Gabriel._ ”

Oh. Huh. Wow. Her demon radar was apparently very broken indeed.

“Was it? Well, he’s a cunt.”

_“BETH!”_

If it was possible to give a celestial being a myocardial infarction, that would have done the trick. She just shrugged, totally unrepentant.

“He was. Why are you so afraid of him, Aziraphale?”

That got her a startled look, blue angelic eyes going wide as he stared at her. As if he hadn’t expected her to pick up on his soul-deep terror. As if she didn’t know him well enough by now. As if she didn’t love him so fiercely.

“I’m not afraid of him,” he started, causing her to scoff.

“Pull the other one.”

“I’m afraid of what they’d do to Crowley if they knew…” he trailed off, hands habitually wringing.

Beth sank down on the bed, digesting that little tidbit as it all started to click together. They’d told her of the Fall, of course. Even she knew that legend, knew how Satan and all his demons came to be. But she’d never concretely put that in context in regards to her _Crowley._ Her Crowley, who’d been an angel once, and hadn’t fallen so much as sauntered vaguely downwards, as he’d told her. Now she wondered if that was just to make her feel better.

“That’s the whole reason for Armageddon,” continued Aziraphale, still fretting. “The war isn’t about humanity at all. It’s about heaven and hell destroying each other, once and for all. Endless heaven or endless hell, depending on who wins.”

Beth frowned, and thought about it for a second.

“Either one sounds awful,” she confessed, and Aziraphale nodded distractedly, agreeing with her even as he shouldn’t.

“But if Gabriel knew that I’d been… _fraternizing_ with Crowley, he wouldn’t punish me. He’d just go and destroy Crowley. One drop of holy water…”

The angel shuddered as he pictured it, and Beth blinked, alarmed.

“He wouldn’t,” she whispered, horrified now. “Oh, god. That’s all it would take?”

“That’s all it would take.” Finally, he sat down on the bed next to her, as they both contemplated that. “It wouldn’t be a simple discorporation. It would be the complete end of him. Nothing to come back. His soul purified and dissolved. Gone. For good.”

She felt nothing but anger as she contemplated that. No fear, not of those slimy bastards. Just anger that for centuries, millennia, her angel and her demon had to hide their love so thoroughly, when it should have gotten them a whole new chapter in the canons. They were so remarkable, and they would be punished for being in love.

That hit too close to home, and some inner part of her raged like an earthquake. 

Love was always to be destroyed, apparently, even by the forces supposedly devoted to love. How could angels be so...so _hateful_?

And how could God ignore it?

The scales of her soul tipped just a little lower to the left.

“So please, don’t antagonize him,” Aziraphale said, apparently oblivious to the tarnish that Beth had just earned for herself. “He never comes by the shop, but if he does again, just...make yourself scarce please. I don’t...I don’t want you to be hurt either.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“You’re telling me. That an angel of God. Would hurt me?”

“If he knew you were...intimate with a demon? Absolutely. Oh. Dear lady, please, stop grinding your teeth, that looks painful.”

She unclenched her jaw at his request, and took one long, deep breath in.

“I’ll stay away from them,” she agreed. “But I don’t like how they frighten you.”

Aziraphale gave her a measured look, licking his lips and swallowing. And then he was leaning in, and he kissed her lightly on the mouth.

The noise that escaped her throat was high, and pained, and desperate. As if she was rigidly holding herself back from deepening that kiss and pouncing on him. The angel realized his mistake just a second too late, and pulled back, chagrined.

“Beth…”

“Don’t do that again, please.” Her tone was tight and strangled, eyes closed, as if she couldn’t cope any other way. “You said no. So I respect that. But don’t...don’t tease me. I’m not that strong.”

“It wasn’t meant to be a tease. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing to me. Just...remember that I’m, well…”

He cut her off again, pulling her into an embrace which she melted into.

“You really do want to be… _sexual_ with me, don’t you?”

“ _Yeah._ ” She pulled back and gave him an incredulous look, mouth hanging slightly open. “I’ve wanted to climb you like a tree since you first sat down at my table four years ago. Which is weird because you’re not even my type! You’re smart, and refined, and kind, and kind of old-fashioned, and well-read, and soft, with the most amazing blue eyes, and just enough of a bastard to be interesting, and…”

He cut her off with another kiss. And this time, she didn’t hold herself back.

She knew this was a remarkably bad idea, now that she understood the stakes, and the reality of his entire existence. Shagging an angel was a damn fine way to make said angel not be an angel anymore.

Except the angel was miracling the blinds closed and the door locked and was wriggling out of his coat even as he kept kissing her.

“Oh, no,” she moaned. She was about to get utterly fucked by an angel at 11:17 on a Thursday morning before the end of the world.

What a way to go.

His hands were just about to start wandering to some actionable places when his old-fashioned rotary phone downstairs started ringing insistently. He pulled away out of habit, gasping a little, and then scowled.

“That’s probably Crowley,” he said, disengaging from their clinch and standing up. She tried to chase the warmth of him with her whole body, gulping down her need. “I’ll be right back,” he promised her, and hustled down to answer the phone.

Beth flopped backwards onto that enormous feather bed and groaned in abject frustration.

“A.Z Fell,” came his voice as the ringing stopped. Silence. And then.

“Are you _certain_ there was another baby?”

Oh. Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to start updating this on Mondays AND Fridays, because I'm 98% done with it, and at 40K if I only update once a week I'll be updating this for the rest of the year lol.
> 
> I'm on Tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack.


	6. Chapter 6

The three of them were on their way, Crowley nudging the Bentley’s speedometer higher and higher as they went. 

“Watch the road, watch the road!” moaned Aziraphale, as Crowley scoffed. As if he didn’t miracle his path utterly clear with every single moment. “Where is this hospital, anyway?”

“Tadfield, Oxfordshire. I kinda remember where it is.”

“Kinda,” huffed Beth. “Crowley, why didn’t you just chuck the Antichrist into a river somewhere?”

“What? No! He was a _baby._ ”

“He was the _Antichrist!_ ”

“Music!” interjected Aziraphale. “Let’s put on some music. Oh. What’s a Velvet Underground?”

“You won’t like it,” warned Crowley.

“Oh. Bebop.”

Beth’s expression went blank for a split second, and then she was screaming into the back of the Bentley’s leather seats. And it wasn’t until Radio Ga Ga started playing that she looked up.

“But that’s not…”

Crowley shook his head at her in the rearview, and she shut up. 

Oh well. She liked Queen quite a bit, after all. Freddie was her ultimate bisexual icon. There were worse albums to listen to.

***

The drive took them the better part of three hours, and so by the time they got to Tadfield, it was late afternoon. Beth stretched out as they exited the Bentley, popping her vertebrae with just the right combination of moves.

Aziraphale and Crowley started walking, and she followed, not sure what they were here for. The manor house in front of them didn’t resemble a hospital at all. In fact, there were some alarming clues that this was actually the exact _opposite_ of a hospital.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” asked Aziraphale. “It doesn’t look like a hospital. And it feels...loved.”

Crowley was stepping on the grass as they walked, and he scowled.

“It’s the right place,” insisted the demon. “What do you mean, loved?”

“I mean the opposite of when you say ‘I don’t like this place, it feels spooky.’”

Which was weird because Beth felt that exact way. If she’d been blindfolded and dropped off here, she never would have questioned it, because it felt like a place she belonged. Like the bookshop. Or the Ritz.

“I never say that,” said Crowley. “Big fan of spooky, me.”

“Bullshit.”

“...Beth, you can’t just declare that whenever you like,” drawled the demon, when they were all shot with alarming accuracy.

A blossom of bright red bloomed on Crowley’s abdomen, as a splotch of blue manifested on Aziraphale’s back. Beth got it the worst, purple splattering her breasts. It stung like a _bitch_ and she yelped. Staggering back into Aziraphale, she groaned as she rubbed at her chest, her fingers coming away stained with…

“Paint?” asked Aziraphale. “What are they playing at?”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s called ‘Silly Buggers,’” answered Crowley, whose tone suggested that he could play too, and do it better.

That was when an obnoxious middle manager type came charging out from behind a convenient pile of boxes, just ever so handy for cover.

“Okay, you’ve all been hit,” he declared, gesturing at them with his ridiculously large paintball gun. “So that means you’re out. Get into the manor and…”

“You shot us without protective gear!” yelled Beth, who knew how this went. (The Ritz had done one of these retreats, a couple of years ago. She hadn’t won, but she made a damn good showing.) “You berk! We’re not part of this! You should know that at a glance!”

The middle manager’s eyes went wide and horrified, as he pictured the inevitable lawsuit. And then Crowley put the icing on the cake by manifesting some sort of horror right in the poor man’s face…

The man fainted.

“Serves you right,” Beth muttered, rubbing at her left tit. Ow.

Aziraphale was pouting at the blue stain on his perfect coat.

“Ooooh, just look at it. I’ve kept it in tiptop condition for one hundred and eighty years. I’ll never get the stain out.”

“Miracle it away,” said Crowley, turning to Beth and inspecting her for damage. She smirked at him and rubbed her purple-paint-stained fingers along his coat sleeve. He snorted at her.

“But I’ll always know the stain was there,” sighed Aziraphale. “Deep down, I mean.” And then he turned that pout on Crowley, blatantly manipulating him into fixing the problem. Crowley made a mocking sort of frown, and then puffed a breath out. All three of them were then miraculously free of paint, and Aziraphale smiled that cat in the cream smile again.

“Thank you,” he simpered, and kept walking.

Beth watched Crowley watching Aziraphale longingly, and let an almost appropriate amount of time pass before she leaned in and whispered at him.

“ _Whipped._ ”

“Shut up!”

“These aren’t proper guns at all,” said the angel, seemingly oblivious to that little exchange. “They just shoot paint.”

“Doesn’t your lot disapprove of guns?” asked Crowley, tilting his head at the rig that the middle manager had dropped, and Aziraphale was inspecting.

“Not if they’re in the right hands,” equivocated the angel. “They lend weight to a moral argument.”

Beth narrowed her eyes and scowled at Aziraphale.

“Gross,” she declared, shaking her head and walking toward the manor’s front door.

“Moral argument,” snickered Crowley, following her. Aziraphale made a sour face and huffed in annoyance as they kept going. 

The interior of the manor was polished and impeccable, the exact sort of place that corporate team-building retreats happened in. There were a few tagged-out office drones sipping cocktails in the lobby, splattered with paint and ignoring the three weirdos moving through their space. Crowley picked up a glossy brochure and scanned through it as they kept going, looking for anything that would indicate this used to be a hospital staffed by Satanic nuns who were really not all that good at their jobs, actually.

That was when the crackle of actual gunfire sounded across the grounds, and Beth flinched.

“What the hell?” she asked, eyes wide, pressing herself against the wall.

“Crowley, what have you done?” demanded Aziraphale. 

“They all wanted real guns,” drawled the demon with a satisfied smirk. “So I just gave them what they wanted.”

“Crowley!” That was from Beth, staring at him utterly aghast.

“It gives weight to their moral arguments.” Crowley strutted ahead, kicking in a random door and peering through it, as if it would have the answers to their questions. “Everyone has free will! Including the right to murder.”

Beth let a horrified little noise leave her throat, even as Aziraphale was scowling in opprobrium. Crowley bent just a little.

“Think of it as a microcosm of the ineffable plan,” he tried, even as Beth covered her mouth with both hands. The looks on their faces made him bend all the way, and he grimaced as if in pain. “All right, fine, nobody’s going to die. They’ll all have miraculous escapes.”

Aziraphale sighed in relief.

“You know, Crowley, I’ve always thought that, deep down, you’re actually very nice…”

Beth gasped in horror as Crowley slammed Aziraphale against the wall, fists curled against his lapels.

“I’m not nice,” he hissed. “Just shut it, I’m a demon, I’m never nice. It’s a four letter word, angel.”

But for some reason, that violence wasn’t actually violent. It was as if she was seeing this particular scene play out for the millionth time. Aziraphale, for his part, was gazing at Crowley’s mouth longingly. Oh. Ah. So that was the way of it. Right. This wasn’t violence, this was foreplay. She cleared her throat at the same time as another woman did, just behind her.

“Gentlemen, I’m sorry to break up an intimate moment, but...oh, Satan preserve us, it’s Master Crowley...!”

Crowley let go of Aziraphale and snapped his fingers. The woman went blank and soft and passive. Now that Beth saw it from the outside, as it were, that little parlor trick was even worse.

“ _Crowley_!” she snarled. 

“You didn’t need to do that,” sighed Aziraphale, tugging his jacket down. Crowley hissed at his partners and rolled his eyes.

“Oooghk, yeah, sure, _excuse_ me, ma’am,” he drawled, still glaring at them both. “We’re just two supernatural beings and a waitress from Clapham looking for the notorious son of Satan, we were wondering if you’d assist us with our enquiries.”

Both of them looked unimpressed, but didn’t make him stop what he was doing.

“You were a nun here, eleven years ago,” continued Crowley. “Right?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes blank and her expression slack. Aziraphale scrunched his nose up.

“Luck of the devil,” he muttered.

“What happened to the baby I gave you?”

“I swapped him with the son of the American ambassador. He was very nice. He used to be the Ambassador in Swindon.”

“Swindon?” That was from Beth, her expression twisting in confusion and dismay. What. This former Satanic nun really thought there was an Ambassador to _Swindon?_ Lord love a duck.

“Yes,” Mary Hodges said in that blank, floaty tone. “And then Sister Theresa Garrulous came and took the other baby away.”

“Fuck,” muttered Crowley. “This ‘ambassador,’ what was his name? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know,” was the hypnotic answer.

“Records,” insisted Aziraphale. “There must be records! Who else gave birth that night, my dear?”

“All the records burned in the fire,” Mary said, her eyes staring straight ahead and creeping Beth out.

“Stop it,” she whispered, pleading to Aziraphale. She really, really hated this particular facet of angelic and demonic powers.

“Fire,” groaned Crowley. “That was Hastur, that’s his style, that bastard. Do you remember _anything_ about the baby?” That was a desperate last attempt to wrest even the smallest morsel of information out of this poor woman.

“He had lovely little toesie-wosies.”

“Stop it,” Beth insisted, just a little louder this time.

Aziraphale stopped it.

“When you wake up, don’t remember this,” he said ruthlessly. “You’ll have had a pleasant dream about whatever you like best.”

And then the three of them were fleeing, as Mary Hodges, neé Loquacious woke up.

***

The police rounding up the entirety of Industrial Holdings (Holdings) PLC was barely a blip on the radar of an angel and demon and waitress, as they all three of them hustled back to the Bentley.

“You’d think he’d show up,” said Aziraphale. “You’d think we could detect him in some way.”

“He won’t show up,” Crowley growled. “Not to us. Protective camouflage. He won’t even know he’s doing it. His powers will keep him hidden from prying occult forces.”

Beth slid into the back seat with a frown.

“I’m not occult! I’m a waitress!” she reminded her demon, and he chuckled.

“Sorry, luv, you’re officially tainted by me. Don’t fret, I’ll put in a good word with Hell.”

“Shut up!”

***

Anathema was having a _rotten_ evening. She’d been tending to her prophecies with special care, but the theodolite and pendant did absolutely nothing. It had been days since she’d moved into Tadfield, and still she was no closer.

The kids in the village were adorable, sure. And she was almost certain that she was in the right place. But every time she tried to zero in on The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of This World, Spawn of Satan, it just got fuzzy and headachy.

She wanted nothing more than to fly back to Malibu and crawl under the covers of her bed until the world ended. Why was she the final line of defense? Why? How could she live her life knowing that her great-great-great etc. grandmother had watched every second of her fate in advance?

𝔏𝔢𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔢𝔩 𝔬𝔣 𝔣𝔞𝔱𝔢 𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔫, 𝔩𝔢𝔱 𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔰 𝔢𝔫𝔧𝔬𝔦𝔫, 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯 𝔣𝔶𝔯𝔢𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔫 𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔢; 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔥𝔦𝔯𝔩 𝔴𝔶𝔫𝔡 𝔴𝔥𝔦𝔯𝔩𝔰, 𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔥 𝔬𝔲𝔱𝔢 𝔬𝔫𝔢 𝔱𝔬 𝔞𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯. 

She wasn’t going to lie, that prophecy called to her the strongest. 

Anathema adjusted her tripod, and muttered to herself.

“Darksome night, and shining moon…” There was a sort of satisfying click in her brain as she found the ley lines. “East by South...by West by Southwest… _got you._ ”

This really was the place. The Antichrist was going to erupt into the world here. The prophecies really were nice and accurate. She had hoped she was where she needed to be, but now she _knew._

She hopped on her bicycle and started pedaling.

There are other fires. God, please, let that mean what she hoped it meant. She’d been a professional descendent for so long. She wished she could just be a woman. She was so caught up in the prophecies that she didn’t see the car speeding down the lane.

(Which she was prophesied to hit, without realizing. 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℭ𝔯𝔬𝔴 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔬𝔟𝔰𝔢𝔯𝔳𝔢 𝔞𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔢 ℜ𝔬𝔟𝔦𝔫 𝔠𝔯𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔲𝔱 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔓𝔦𝔤𝔢𝔬𝔫 𝔣𝔞𝔩𝔩𝔰. Anathema’s own mother had annotated this prophecy as a metaphor for the death of Princess Diana in 1997.)

Anathema shrieked as she went ass over teakettle, and landed with a bone-breaking thump. Pain shot up her arm and she let out a shriek before flopping back again. Everything was dark and she was really badly injured and she was frightened...and then there was light. In her half-dazed state, she said the first thing that came to mind.

“How the hell did you do that?”

The light disappeared. “Here, now. Nothing broken.”

The pain she had felt, the pain of a broken arm, dissolved and faded like a cool breeze.

“I think I hit my head,” she murmured weakly, staring up at the two men hovering over her. 

And then _she_ appeared. A copper-haired, green-eyed angel, staring down at her like she was a lost treasure of Atlantis. Anathema sat up slowly, supported by the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen.

“Hi,” she said, sounding breathless and stunned. “Don’t mind them, they’re harmless. Nuts, but harmless.”

“Oh. Uh. Okay.”

“Are you all right?” 

The angel’s accent was beyond adorable, and Anathema was embarrassed by her disheveled state.

“I’m fine,” she said, smoothing her hair back with a self-conscious hand.

“Good.” It seemed as if they were both wallowing in awkwardness. “Erm. I’m Beth.”

“Anathema.” 

“Hi, Anathema.”

“Hi, Beth.”

If she weren’t here to try to stop the end of the world, she’d be incredibly distracted by Beth’s sudden appearance. Hell, she was seriously contemplating giving up the descendent gig and running away with her to a commune. Oh god, she was so gay and so embarrassed.

The two men were glancing at each other, as if they knew what was up, and Beth gave them the middle finger over her shoulder. The skinny man in the dark glasses laughed a little.

“Can you get up?”

“...Yeah.” Anathema clambered to her feet, picking a couple of leaves off of her skirt, and holding on to Beth’s arm. There was a moment when they both realized just how much they were touching each other, and got incredibly flustered and breathless.

“Where can we take you?” asked the redheaded man, leveling a knowing look at Beth.

“Oh, uh...my bicycle…”

“No harm done,” said the blond man, already wheeling it toward the flash vintage car. “Amazingly resilient, these old machines.” It was true, the bike was in perfect condition. Too perfect, actually; it suddenly had gears and a wheel pump.

“Um…”

“It’s fine!” said Beth with a giant smile, distracting Anathema again. “Don’t fret. We’ll get you home.”

“There’s nowhere to put the bike,” growled the redhead.

“Except the bicycle rack,” said the blonde, gesturing toward the back of the car. Sure enough, it had a perfect slot for bicycles, which Anathema was certain hadn’t been there a second ago. She almost protested, but then Beth was there, smiling at her shyly.

“Honest. They’re really nice,” she promised. And Anathema gave in.

“I’m at Jasmine Cottage. I’ll give you directions.”

She ended up next to Beth in the back seat of the Bentley, trying not to panic.

“Oh lord, heal this bike,” muttered Crowley under his breath to Aziraphale, as the women in the back seat gazed longingly at each other. Both angel and demon had felt the utter gobsmacked lust that Beth had felt the second she’d clapped eyes on Anathema, like a bolt of lightning.

“I got carried away,” whispered Aziraphale, trying very carefully to not look over his shoulder and into the back.

“Where are you from?” Beth asked, totally oblivious to the conversation going on at the front of the Bentley.

“Southern California. Malibu, actually.”

“Hanging out with movie stars, hey?” Beth grinned, flirting with malice aforethought.

“No,” said Anathema, grinning back. “It’s...not like that. The movies make it seem so glamorous. Honestly, it’s just...not a big deal.”

“Bullshit,” said Beth with a giant grin, and Anathema’s pulse sped up. “You’re lying. C’mon, fess up, you’re best friends with Robert Downey Jr., aren’t you?”

“You’ve caught me,” she said, even as she blushed with the lie. “I’m totally in with all the hottest Hollywood stars.”

Anathema couldn’t help it, her hand found Beth’s hand next to hers on the seat. Their fingers intertwined without any hesitation. She wracked her brain for a proper prophecy, hoping against hope that this was the wheel of fate turning.

“...Turn left here, please.” 

The Bentley did as it was told, and mere seconds later, they were at the gate of Jasmine Cottage.

When Crowley hit the brakes, Beth and Anathema tumbled out of the car in an instant, even as Aziraphale miracled the bike against her garden wall. Anathema didn’t notice. She was too busy staring at Beth, both of them lingering together under the gate archway of her cottage, and both gathering the courage.

“Can I have your number?” Beth pleaded, itching to surge forward and kiss her.

“I...just moved in,” Anathema said quietly. “I don’t remember the number to the cottage.”

“Do you have Skype?” Beth insisted. “My Skype handle is E.L.Graber.”

“NiceDevice,” she returned, totally smitten. There was something wrong with this...but like hell was she going to extract herself. She wanted nothing more than to get to know this strawberry blonde angel.

“Can I call you?”

“Yeah. Please.”

Then they both stared at each other like there was no tomorrow, which they both knew was the case. The end of the world was looming, after all.

“Okay,” said Beth.

“Okay,” said Anathema.

Both of them staggered away, grinning like utter idiots, distracted as hell. Beth slumped in the back seat of the Bentley, entirely forgetting the whole reason they were in this village. She spent a good twenty seconds picturing what would have happened if she’d followed her into that cottage, and it didn’t entirely involve getting naked. Not entirely.

Aziraphale and Crowley wisely said nothing for several miles, but then Crowley couldn’t resist.

“Beeeth,” the demon crooned. “You’re really in the _shiiiiiiit_.” 

She blushed hot red.

“Well, you’ve both made it clear I’m barking up the wrong tree with you two!” she snarked. “I might as well go barking up that one.” She sighed and flopped down across the seats. 

Aziraphale snickered to himself as his dear lady flopped over. He turned to her, and smiled to see her so happy. Almost giddy.

“I’m glad,” he said. “You deserve it.”

“Oh lord,” was the answer, as she buried her face in her hands. “You must think I’m awful.”

“Not at all,” the angel reassured her. “Love is never a bad thing.”

Without looking, she groped ahead with one hand, and he reached back to take it. Their fingers twined together, and Beth knew they still adored her, even as she fell hard for somebody else.

“We’re still no closer to finding the Antichrist,” reminded Crowley, after they’d had their moment.

“Right. I might have a...network of agents,” confessed Aziraphale, hand still gripping Beth’s. “Humans are good at finding humans, after all. I could put them on the task.”

“I might also have something similar,” confessed Crowley.

“Twenty minutes with Google,” Beth pressed. “I’ll figure it out.”

“No!” exclaimed Crowley and Aziraphale together.

“You’re going to stay out of it. Just...we don’t want you drawing the wrong sort of attention.”

Beth frowned, and then remembered Granite Face with a shudder.

“Fine. Ugh, I should go home. I’m supposed to be in class tomorrow, too. And work after that.” She’d never confess it, but she missed the structure of her life prior to her discovering that she was in love with a literal angel and a literal demon. 

“That’s a good idea,” said Aziraphale. 

“I’ll drop you off,” agreed Crowley.

The rest of the drive was quiet, as Beth took a nap. It had been a frightfully long day, after all.

SoHo was the first stop, and as Aziraphale got out of the car, he glanced at his adorable human, still snoozing in the back seat. 

That was when he saw it. There was a big, thick book in the footwell.

“There’s a book,” he said, leaning in and picking it up.

“Not mine, I don’t read.”

Aziraphale looked at the cover. It was hard to pick out in the dingy SoHo streetlights, but it was clear enough for him to understand. And as he understood, his head went all distant and ringy. 

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔑𝔦𝔠𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔄𝔠𝔠𝔲𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔢 𝔓𝔯𝔬𝔭𝔥𝔢𝔠𝔦𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔄𝔤𝔫𝔢𝔰 𝔑𝔲𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯, 𝔚𝔦𝔱𝔠𝔥.

“Oh my,” he breathed, running his fingers over the gilt lettering. “It must belong to Anathema.”

“Well I’m not returning it,” Crowley said. “I’m in enough trouble below, I can’t go around returning books to strangers.”

“Right, fine,” said Aziraphale, totally distracted. “Erm. Right. Beth was going to call her tomorrow, I’ll just hold on to it until then.” He tucked the book under his arm and hustled into his shop. He had to read this book _right now_. It was...merciful heavens, it was the actual book of true prophecies. He had his perfectly manicured fingers on it _actually right now._

“You okay?” asked Crowley to the angel’s retreating back.

“Everything’s tickety-boo!” Aziraphale said, as he slammed the door to his shop behind him.

“Well. That was a thing.”

He glanced at Beth, still asleep across the back seat, and sniffed.

When he finally got her home, he gently shook her awake and escorted her up to her flat. She leaned into him easily, her arm around his skinny waist.

“I really kind of hate that I’ve got to work tomorrow,” she said sadly, climbing the stairs to her flat. “But I can’t keep skiving off.”

“Well, the world _is_ ending,” he started, to be cut off by a glare from her. He raised his hands in surrender. Humans needed routine, he got that. “Do what you gotta. But...hey. Listen. It’s all gonna be okay.”

“I hope you’re right,” she murmured in the doorway of her flat, hand on the knob to push the door shut. 

….Fuck it.

“Come in?” she asked, not sure which way the ball would bounce.

Crowley contemplated it for a second, and then grinned like a snake.

“Back to barking up this tree then, eh?”

“Shut up. Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a yes.”

That’s what Aziraphale deserved for running off to make love to a book. She and Crowley had a very pleasant night, thank you very much. A pleasant night that consisted of several rounds of mind-blowing sex. Mind your own business.


	7. Chapter 7

Class the next morning was torture. She just had too much on her mind. She couldn’t focus on any single aspect of it. But she also couldn’t just get up and walk out of the class. She ended up playing Candy Crush on her phone, just to make the anxiety go away.

And getting ready for work was even worse.

A storm had popped up as she left campus, driving herself home to change for work. The Mini’s windshield wipers had flopped ineffectively against the rain, and she barely made it to her flat. She had about an hour before she had to be on shift, so she turned on her laptop and fired up Skype. She might as well say hello to Anathema, maybe they could work out a way to get together again.

The second the program opened, it was pinging and chirping with alerts, and an immediate incoming call. Whoa. Uh.

_ NiceDevice messaged you 20 times. NiceDivice 15 missed calls. NiceDevice incoming call. _

Her ego skyrocketed.

“Hey!” she grinned as she accepted the call.

“Beth!” Anathema looked utterly distressed, and Beth’s ego crashed again. The messages and missed calls weren’t about her, apparently. “Um. I think I left a book in your friend’s car.”

“Oh. Erm. He didn’t say anything…” Anathema’s expression crumpled and Beth felt her heart break. “I can call Anthony and see?”

“Do you mind?” she demanded, absolutely frantic and barely concealing it.

“Not at all.”

So, still on Skype, she called Crowley in full view of Anathema, as the poor woman gnawed her lower lip.

“Hey, it’s me,” she said as Crowley picked up. “Can you check and see if there’s a book in the Bentley? ...Oh? He did? Huh. Okay. I’ll go get it later. Ciao, handsome.”

She turned back to her computer screen and gave Anathema a comforting smile.

“My friend Az...Ezra has it. The blond. He found it last night.”

“Oh thank _god,_ ” groaned Anathema. “Listen, I know it’s a long drive, but I _really_ need it back. I’ll pay your gas...petrol. Can you bring it to me?”

Beth grimaced, and glanced at her phone. The temptation was high, but...

“I can’t. Not tonight. I’m on shift in less an hour. I’ve already called out sick too much this week. I’m so sorry.”

“Shit,” Anathema whispered, and ran her hands over her face. Beth panicked.

“I get off work at ten?” she said, flustered and unhappy. “I can bring it to you then?”

“Please,” the brunette begged. “Whenever you can. Please?”

Beth caved, a sucker for a pretty face. “Okay. Must be an important book.”

“You have no idea.”

Beth chuckled, and tried to reassure this gorgeous woman she was nursing a terrible crush on. “Well, it’s in good hands. Ezra owns a bookshop. He’s very, very careful with books. Collects them, actually.”

Instead of it being reassuring, Anathema actually paled at that, her dark eyes going wide as saucers.

“Do you think he’d read it?”

“Erm. Probably not. He’s very conscientious with other people’s property,” she said honestly, but she also knew Aziraphale. “I mean, he might?”

“Oh, god.” Anathema looked like she was about to vomit.

“I’ll call him,” Beth said hurriedly. “Tell him not to. It’s gonna be okay.”

“I gotta go. Just...whenever you can. Bring it to me?”

“I will.”

And so the Skype call ended. What the hell was that book? 

A mystery she had no time to solve. She had to get to work. So she donned her uniform and braved the storm, ready to serve at the Ritz.

***

The dining room was empty. Utterly, totally empty. For the first time in her career, Beth had not a single table to serve. The storm outside raged, as the staff cluttered around the break room watching the news. And it was _wild._ Missing nuclear reactors, Atlantis risen from the ocean floor, Leviathan destroying whaling ships, aliens landing at 10 Downing Street. She knew what it all meant, that the Antichrist was coming into his powers for real, and that the world was about to end. And she couldn’t tell a single soul.

Her manager pulled her aside around seven o’clock, rubbing at his pencil-thin mustache out of nerves.

“Hey, I’m sending everybody home and closing the kitchen.”

“Good idea,” she whispered. “Charlie...this is so bad.”

“It’s not great,” he agreed. “Are you gonna be alright? I don’t want you to lose any more money.”

“I don’t give one single ripping shit about my paycheck right now.”

He chuckled, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek since nobody was looking.

“Stay safe,” he whispered, and she couldn’t help but grin at him.

“Why’d we break up again?”

“Because it’d look bad if I got you a job because we were shagging?”

“Riiiiight.” She kissed him back and gave him a brief, tight hug. “You stay safe too, okay?”

“Promise.”

The blue Mini Cooper left Mayfair, but didn’t head to Clapham. No, she was headed to Aziraphale’s shop to grab that book, and then she was going to risk her life driving in this storm to get it back to Anathema. It was reckless and stupid and she’d do it again in a heartbeat. 

There was no parking again.

“Really?!” she cried to herself, circling the block and thinking as hard as she could at the angel. “C’mon, Aziraphale, you had to know I was coming. Get me a parking spot please!”

It was the first time she saw the miracle happen with her own two eyes: Two cars in front of the shop suddenly shifted, one forward and one backward, without causing any sort of fender bender or physics mistakes. A perfect patch of sidewalk appeared, just the right size for her Mini.

“ _Thank_ you!” 

She rushed into the shop, dripping wet and windblown, and she closed the door behind her...which she neglected to lock.

“Aziraphale!” she called, shaking her hair out and doffing her coat. “Crowley told me you found Anathema’s book!”

The angel came out from the kitchenette, but something was wrong. He looked awful, like he’d been crying, eyes puffy and red, mouth trembling in a wobbly pout. Her heart broke for him, and she rushed to him and grabbed his hands.

“What’s happened?” she asked, almost weeping for him. He looked so, so very upset! Whoever had hurt her angel was going to bloody _pay…_

“I’ve done something awful,” he whispered. “I...I told Crowley I wasn’t...that I didn’t...that I didn’t even like him. That it was over. The Arrangement was over. _We_ were over.”

“What?” she gasped, horrified. “Aziraphale, why would you do that?”

“He wanted me to betray Heaven!” he cried out, his blue eyes shining with unshed tears. 

Beth looked at him very closely, and reached up to cup his cheek. “But...angel. You already are. You’re trying to stop the apocalypse. You told me, this war...it’s wanted by both sides. If you try to stop it, you’re…”

“Don’t.” That was a command, the kind written on stone, brought down from a mountain, etc., shutting his mind and pulling away from her. “Please.”

She wasn’t exactly certain what it took to make an angel fall, but she had a feeling that they were both toeing very close to the edge.

“Okay,” she breathed after a beat, still gripping his hands in hers. “But I’m not letting either of you go. I’ll force you to fix this if it kills all three of us. You two are _mine_ , and I mean to keep you both.”

Aziraphale actually looked somewhat comforted by that, and he managed a little laugh.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever been claimed by a human being before,” he said, wiping his eyes with a careful forefinger.

“Get used to it,” she said, moving back in and pressing a kiss to his lips. “I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

The angel sighed again, and then perked up significantly.

“Oh! I know. I’ll...I’ll ask Her directly. She’ll understand, She’ll tell me what to do.”

“You’re going to...talk to God?” Beth asked, blinking at her angel. Sure, she’d accepted all of the weirdness into her life, but that was a bridge too far.

“Yes. Oh! You should, erm. Go upstairs for this. It wouldn’t do for you to overhear. It might, erm. Melt your brain.”

She rolled her eyes, and gave him a smack on his arm with the back of her hand. “Fine, I’ll go upstairs and plug my ears. But give me Anathema’s book first, I promised I’d bring it to her.”

“Oooh, uh, about that…”

She didn’t let him finish, and grabbed the book off his desk. It had been carefully propped open, so she snapped it shut and glanced at the cover. And then she froze quite still.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“ _OH!_ ”

“Exactly!”

“Why the hell does _Anathema_ have this book?” she demanded, tapping her forefinger against the gilt lettering.

“I don’t know!” he said, just as excited and flustered as she was. “But I’ve almost cracked it. I know who the Antichrist is! And where! Listen, just...just go upstairs and I’ll come fetch you when I’m done, alright? We’ll go to Tadfield together.”

“Yeah, you and me,” she agreed, tucking the book under her arm. It felt like everything was about to go _right_ for a change. “What about Crowley?”

“He...erm. He said he was going to Alpha Centauri. Without us.”

“Drama queen,” she muttered, already pulling out her cell phone. “Look, I’ll talk him down, you do what you have to.”

So she was already sitting on Aziraphale’s bed as he opened the portal to address God directly, thumbing through the book as she called Crowley.

Three things happened simultaneously.

The phone call didn’t go through, but instead encountered a busy signal. (Which was weird, in this day and age, but very lucky for her, since it kept her from accidentally releasing the demon Hastur - trapped in Crowley’s ansaphone - right into her eardrum which would have ended very badly in general.)

Aziraphale made contact with the Metatron.

And Beth saw her own name in the book of true prophecies.

The busy signal buzzed in her ear as she read the words, barely even daring to breathe.

𝔒𝔥 𝔊𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔱 𝔈𝔩𝔦𝔷𝔞𝔟𝔢𝔱𝔥, 𝔶𝔢 𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔫’𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔩𝔬𝔠𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔬𝔬𝔯𝔢. 𝔎𝔢𝔢𝔭𝔢 𝔶𝔢 𝔠𝔞𝔩𝔪, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔠𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔢 𝔬𝔫. Much to her dismay, several generations of Nutters and Devices had annotated this prophecy over the centuries, with most coming to the conclusion that it had something to do with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. But Beth knew the truth.

She’d forgotten to lock the front door of the shop as she came in. 

“Oh no,” she breathed.

The Nice and Accurate Prophecies still in her arms, she’d barely made it to the top of the stairs when the front door slammed open, and a grizzled old man was shouting at Aziraphale. She ran as fast as she could toward the fight, but Aziraphale shouted back at her.

“BETH! DON’T!”

She skidded to a stop, just barely outside the circle he’d made on the floor. The eldritch circle was glowing with ethereal energy, and humming with a faint malevolence. It was impersonal, and impatient, and would happily and mindlessly destroy any mortal that dared step into it.

With a horrified gulp, she slowly backed up. The circle was now between her and her angel, and there was no room to edge around it.

“Look at you!” shouted the mysterious stranger, pointing his finger at Aziraphale, then at Beth. “Seducin’ wimmin to your evil will!”

“I think you have the wrong shop!” said the angel, supremely offended.

“Bell!” the man insisted, his finger snagging the clapper of the bell above the front door.

“Book!” he continued, grabbing the Buggre Alle This bible off the shelf.

“Practically candle!” he shouted, flicking an old Ronson lighter on.

“Stop it! Get out!” she shouted, still clutching the Prophecies in both arms. She was trying to get to the other side of the circle, but the shelves were in the way. Aziraphale shook his head desperately at her, before looking back at this maniac waving a lighter around. “Aziraphale!”

“It would be a very bad idea…” started the angel.

“By the powers vested in me as a duly appointed member of the Witchfinder Army…”

“Stay back, please, I’m begging you, you can’t step in the circle…”

“What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“I charge ye to quit this place and return henceforth…”

“Don’t get any closer, you stupid man!”

“Aziraphale, don’t move, wait…!”

“Deliver us from evil and returning _nae more!_ ”

Aziraphale stepped into the circle. That malevolent humming got louder, and a bright flash of light filled the shop.

“...Oh, _**fuck!**_ ”

And then her angel was gone, like he was beamed up in Star Trek. A shower of sparks descended from the ceiling, and the crazed old man stared up at the pyrotechnics like he was about to faint. The circle was also gone.

“ _AZIRAPHALE!!!_ ” Beth was screeching in dismay, and zeroing in on the horrid creature what did this. “What did you do?!” 

She snapped. That was it, Vesuvius was officially erupting. She started beating the stranger about the shoulders and head with the very heavy book she was wielding, and he fled to the front door under her onslaught. “WHAT. DID. YOU. DO. TO. _MY. ANGEL!?!?_ ”

The man, whoever he was, slammed the door hard behind him to get away from the harpy beating him with a book. The force of it knocked over a candle that had been around the circle, and that was all it took. 

She was all too aware of the irony that his musical librettos were the first to go up in flames.

“Oh, god,” she whispered. “Fire extinguisher, he _has_ to have one somewhere?!”

Still clutching the Prophecies, she tried to keep calm as she hunted for something, anything to put out the fire. But the thing about fire is that it spreads, and the thing about dry old books is that they’re a marvelous tinder. It took only thirty seconds before it was roaring through the whole shop, and had cut off her only exit. The heat and the smoke was overwhelming, and she dropped to her knees. Trying to remember what she’d been taught as a child about getting out of a raging inferno. Stay low to the ground, cover your mouth and nose with your shirt, stay calm…

She did all of the above, she really did, but it was only a matter of time before she was overwhelmed. Her home burned, and she was about to go up with it. And worst of all, there was no rescue coming. Crowley was gone too.

“Please, God,” she prayed for the first time in her life. “No.”

She passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey just a heads up I'm out of town on vacation this next week, so there won't be another update until Friday the 13. ...Oh no I've cursed my own fic.
> 
> Tumblr. Zinglebert-bembledack. *finger guns*


	8. Chapter 8

In the end, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t leave, not when there was still even the slightest bit of hope. He couldn’t leave his angel and his waitress behind. So the Bentley roared through SoHo, driven by a desperate, lonely and frightened demon.

He screeched to a halt about a block away from the shop, because it was on fire. 

Aziraphale’s _shop_ was on _fire._

There were cries of firefighters trying to stop him, but it didn’t register. Because he couldn’t sense his angel anywhere...but he could sense _Beth._ Unconscious, singed a little, but alive. He ran into the shop like Satan was on his heels, pulling his sunglasses up to kill the glare. 

There.

She was on the floor, and she was clutching a book to her chest as if she was protecting it. Crowley started yelling even as he was scooping her up.

“Aziraphale?! Where are you?! _AZIRAPHALE_!!!”

That was when he was knocked off his feet by a blast of water from a firehose. He just barely managed to keep Beth above him as he fell. Oof. She groaned slightly, and stirred a little, but didn’t wake.

“I’m done!” the demon yelled, at the above, at the below, at the entire ineffable world. “I’ve had it! I hate you all! Somebody killed my best friend! TO HELL WITH YOUR BLASTED GREAT PLAN!” he shouted as loudly as he could. “ _ **AZIRAPHALE**_!!”

Nothing. He had to get Beth out of this inferno. Aziraphale was gone, and so they had to adjust accordingly.

Scooping her up again, he rushed out of the shop, cradling her as gently as he could. Some paramedic approached him blathering on about getting her into an ambulance, when Crowley snapped his fingers impatiently. (The man grew confused and wandered away, to join the ranks of the interesting SoHo night people.)

Tenderly, carefully, Crowley laid Beth out on the back seat of the Bentley, dropping that book she was clutching in the footwell, and puffed a few breaths into her mouth. Just enough to help the demonic miracle along, and she stirred, coughing and eventually gasping.

“C-Crowley…?”

She coughed again, a deep rasping cough that spoke of too much smoke inhalation, and Crowley helped her sit up to clear the lungs even further.

“Keep breathing,” he demanded, and she obeyed.

“Oh, Crowley, he’s gone.” Another racking cough, this one accompanied by tears, and the demon just nodded grimly.

“I know. What happened?”

“There was...he had a weird circle done in chalk on the floor, with squiggly lines all around it, and it was glowing, and then this crazy old man with a terrible Northern accent came in…”

“Was he wearing a terrible Mac to go along with it?”

“Yes! How did you know that? Was that a demon?”

“No, that was a Shadwell. Keep talking.”

Beth didn’t want to know what a Shadwell was, if it was worse than a demon.

“He was shouting nonsense about bells and books and then he was crowding in on Aziraphale and I was stuck on the other side of the circle and couldn’t get to him and he stepped in it and…”

Crowley interrupted this panicked flow of words with a gentle finger on her lips.

“Breathe,” he reminded, and yeah, she was getting a little dizzy. He gave her a moment, and then pointed toward the sky.

“Aziraphale stepped in the circle and…” Another point up. Beth nodded, almost frantic with worry.

“He’s fine, right? He’s an angel. He can’t _really_ die. Right?”

Crowley didn’t answer for a long moment. He knew that Beth wouldn’t recognize Enochian and the ancient dead languages of Ur, but the chalk circle, that was the time-honored way of it. If Aziraphale had stepped in it….

“He’s out of the equation,” was the final, flat verdict. “This close to the end of the world, they’ll issue him his flaming sword and shove him out on the battlefield. No time for a new body.”

There had been some last lingering hope that her angel would be coming back. But Crowley was right. Either the world would end, or Aziraphale would be stuck in heaven forever. 

“Oh.”

She was never going to see her angel again. And judging by the look on Crowley’s face, he was even worse off than she was. That last little hope withered, slithered away, and died.

“C’mon,” said Crowley. “Pick a pub, any pub,” he gestured at the street. “We’re going to drink a lot of shit vodka and wait for the end.”

“That’s...yeah. That’s the way to go.”

She absently picked up the book from the footwell and hugged it close again. It was the only book left in the world, aside from her Brontë, that Aziraphale had touched. She wasn’t ever letting it out of her sight again. Sorry, Anathema, the prophecies were hers now.

And anyway the daft old bint Agnes hadn’t predicted this, so fuck her.

(She actually had not. Agnes’ prophecies had nothing to do with heaven and hell and the Apocalypse, but rather to do with the safety of her descendents. Since she knew Anathema would be nowhere near the bookshop, she only dropped in her one encouraging line to Beth, and left it at that.) (Mainly because she knew...well, that would be spoiling it.) (If Agnes Nutter could have inserted emojis into her great work, the emoji accompanying her hint to Beth would have been a kitty-face emoji, followed by a taco emoji.)

So it was a very depressed demon and a despondent waitress that slunk into a ratty SoHo pub, and proceeded to lay hands on every bottom-shelf vodka they could get.

The red sky over London slowly went black.

***

“I never asked to be a demon,” he said, already starting to hiss and slur. Beth just nodded sympathetically at him, a tight feeling in her chest and throat. “I was just minding my own business one day, and then _heeeeey_ , it’s Lucifer and the guys. And they say, woop, hey, Crowley, we’re just on our way to discuss the whole job conditions and advancement thing.”

Beth, a non-union employee, could no more have stopped her fierce, agreeing nod, than flapped her arms and flown to Alpha Centauri.

“So, okay, the food hasn’t been great lately, I’d got nothing on for the rest of the afternoon, next thing I know, whffffft!” He made a downwards sliding motion with his hand, nearly knocking over their shot glasses. “I’m doing a million-light-year fall into a pool of boiling sulfur.”

She flinched.

“Shouldn’ta happened to you.” Her original accent was out in force now, since she was so very drunk indeed. “You’re so nice.”

“No’m not.” It was an automatic denial, with no heat or weight behind it, and Beth just blew a raspberry at him.

“I thought it was all rubbish, until I met him. Right there, on that garden wall. Ssssix thousand years,” hissed Crowley, so drunk his tongue was starting to go a little forked. Beth swayed where she sat, and downed another shot glass full of poison. She never drank straight shots, she always had a mixer. Not tonight.

“S’a long time,” she said back, eyes glazed and drooping. “You loved him a long time. Why didn’tcha hate me? For loving him?”

“Eeeengh, I know I’m s’posed to be jealous, m’ma demon, s’what I do. But honestly? Never occurred to me.”

“Really?” Beth was staring at him now, her chin cupped in her hands. “Why?”

Crowley shrugged. It was a complicated, sloshing motion, fueled by a handle of vodka. (He was drinking most of it so she wouldn’t match him. Wouldn’t do for her to die of acute liver failure before actual Armageddon.) He tried opening his mouth, but no sound came out for a second, instead landing on that verbal keysmash noise he was so good at.

“Mainly because I was intri-...intreeg-...interested in you. You’re primo demon bait, beautiful.”

“Ffff, don’t I know it,” she slurred. “And those are just my exes. Heyooo!”

Crowley actually chuckled for a second, but it was too short and too shallow to be genuinely mirthful.

“Heresss the thing,” he said after a second. “You’re also primo angel bait. The second he and I stopped that mugger...welp. Every century or so, we sssnag on a human we’re both drawn to. Soul in the balance, ‘at sorta thing.”

“Oh. So, what, I’m just a point for the other side to score? Issat why you slept with me?”

“No.” His quiet, sincere tone made her look up, and he was peering at her over his sunglasses. Those amazing golden eyes were shining, and she’d never, ever tell him she noticed. “Every other time, we never told them what we were. We tempted, we saved, we nudged. But we never fell in love.”

Those words slammed into the wet slurry of her mind at something slightly below the speed of light. She’d assumed all this time that this was entirely one-sided, that she loved them and they felt the same sort of tolerant affection that a human felt for a small rodent. Cute, difficult to clean up after, kinda smelly, but still adored pets.

But now the world was about to end, and she found out that, yeah, they really loved her. She poured and downed another shot with a slightly shaking hand.

“Did you ever tell him how you felt?” she whispered, suddenly desperate to drag the conversation off of her.

“No.”

And that was the moment that Beth truly understood the horrifying reality of just what _eternity_ actually was. She saw the echoes of it in Crowley’s expression, as he knew he had to spend the rest of eternity without the being he loved. They were on opposite sides of a war, when the world ended. There would be no reconciliation. 

“Aw, no, don’t cry,” muttered Crowley suddenly. “You promised me you wouldn’t cry. You said you weren’t a crying drunk.”

Beth reached up and wiped away stubborn tears.

“M’not. I spilled my vodka. On my eyes.”

Crowley let out another sound that could have been a chuckle as he reached for the bottle again. Beth felt the weirdest sensation start at the back of her scalp as he poured, and she ineffectively swatted at her hair, like she was waving away a bug. It distracted her from her tears, at least, and she snagged the bottle as he finished off his shot.

“Sorry. Crowley, look, I know I’m the last place ‘You Participated’ ribbon for you…”

“S’not true…”

She ignored that. “But I’m here. As long as I can be.”

That weird sensation hit her again, this time as a wave of dizziness as her demon gave her a sad smile, which suddenly morphed into something resembling concern.

“You okay?”

“Jussad too much to drink,” she slurred, and her ears started ringing. A flash of lightning dazzled London for a moment, and then Beth saw something incredible.

Reflected in Crowley’s glasses, right next to her, was Aziraphale. She spun to her right, but there was nothing and nobody in the seat next to her.

But Crowley’s next word told her that she wasn’t hallucinating due to too much cheap vodka. He said their angel’s name, in the most wistful and broken tone she’d ever heard out of him.

“Aziraphale. Are you here?”

There was a silence, and Beth kept swiveling her head from Crowley to the empty seat next to her, blinking and trying not to get the spins.

“Of course I can hear you….No. I changed my mind. Stuff happened. I lost my best friend.”

He sounded so utterly heartbroken at that, like he was about to spill vodka in his eyes, too.

“...Oh, angel. Your bookshop isn’t there anymore. It burned down. M’Sorry. I’m too drunk right now, seein’ things. What was the book?”

Another pause, and then for the first time since he pulled her out of that burning building, she saw a flash of hope light up his face.

“...Agnes Nutter! Beth has it! She saved it from the shop!”

“Crowley, what the fuck?” she finally interrupted his solo monologue, utterly baffled.

“Oh! Beth can’t hear you, Aziraphale, patch her in on the call. ...You know what I mean! Don’t be pedantic. ...Oh. Huh.”

Crowley turned to her and gave her a lopsided grin. “Aziraphale says he’s tried to get into your head to speak through you, but apparently you’ve got, and I quote, a mind like a safe.”

“...Thanks?” That was either the nicest compliment she’d ever received, or she was going to give Aziraphale a right knocking about whenever he got back on this plane of existence.

“Open the book,” he suddenly commanded, and she did. Right there, at the front of it, near an adorably scribbled-on title page, was a sheaf of paper covered in Aziraphale’s neat copperplate handwriting. She’d grown very accustomed to it since she started helping him restore books that she read it with ease. Or relative ease, since she’d gone through nearly a fifth of vodka.

Circled, in all capital letters, was the name of the antichrist and his address.

She gulped, and turned to where she thought her angel was perched, and didn’t know if he’d hear, but she had to try.

“I’m sorry I didn’t lock the door,” she whispered, and that strange tingly sensation hit her scalp again. She imagined it was the discorporated form of Aziraphale petting the back of her head.

“...He says it’s not your fault, Beth. Don’t blame yourself.”

She still sort of deflated, trying to accept that celestial forgiveness. Another pause, and Crowley set his jaw.

“He’s gonna go look for a more, eugk, receptive mind, no offense Beth, and we’ve gotta get to Tadfield. With a…” he paused, made a hideously sour face, and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “...A wiggle-on. Aaaand...he’s gone.”

Beth nodded, and then shook her head. “I’m drunk. You’re drunk. We can’t drive like this.”

Crowley grimaced, and then leaned forward across the table, and took her hands.

“You’re not gonna like this,” he said with a twist of his mouth. “Sorry.”

And then Beth had the most unpleasant sensation of her bloodstream being siphoned clean of alcohol, her brain being rehydrated forcefully, and her liver getting punted into working much faster than it normally would. It was dreadfully uncomfortable, and she made a face to reflect that.

“...Did you just miracle me sober?” she asked, to which Crowley nodded. “Fuck me. That’s...ugh, never do that to me again, either!”

“No promises,” growled Crowley, throwing a couple of hundred quid notes on the table as he stood up. “Let’s get a wiggle on!”

***

The Bentley couldn’t roar and scream through London, because it was stuck in the worst traffic jam the world had ever seen. Crowley wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but he had a sinking suspicion. So, to distract Beth, he gave her a project.

“Read the book,” he told her.

“As if I’m smart enough to figure out cryptic prophecies!” she said in return, scowling at her demon.

“You’ve got Aziraphale’s notes,” he snarked back. “Help me figure out what we’re supposed to do now!”

“Hnnnghk.” But she flipped the book open and started cross-referencing against Aziraphale’s notes. There were over four thousand prophecies, of which her angel had eliminated three thousand, nine hundred and sixty-five as having happened decades - or even centuries - ago. The ones specific to the end of the world had been carefully curated by number, and Beth started with those first. (She eliminated the one that referenced her by name, which Aziraphale hadn’t caught, which made her heart ache.)

𝔉𝔬𝔲𝔯 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔣𝔬𝔲𝔯 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔯𝔢𝔢 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔞𝔰 𝔱𝔴𝔬, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔴𝔬 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔦𝔫 𝔣𝔩𝔞𝔶𝔪𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔬𝔫𝔢 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔩𝔶, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔟𝔢 𝔫𝔬 𝔰𝔱𝔬𝔭𝔭𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪, 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔣𝔦𝔰𝔥𝔢 𝔫𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔫, 𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔱𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔩 𝔬𝔯 𝔡𝔢𝔳𝔦𝔩𝔩𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔶𝔢 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔩 𝔟𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔩𝔰𝔬, 𝔄𝔫𝔞𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪𝔞.

She read all the annotations of the various Nutters and Devices over the years, many of which had said that Agnes had been well and truly drunk when she’d written this one, and wiped her hand over her mouth. Aziraphale had marked this one with multiple question marks, then multiple exclamation points, and then had written FOUR HORSEMEN! in all caps.

“Crowley? What are the four horsemen?”

He snorted.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you weren’t religious. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Pollution and War and Famine and Death, white and red and black and grey. They ride out to start Armageddon.”

“Oh.” She kept reading as Crowley navigated the Bentley onto a shoulder that was clearly marked ‘do not pass.’ That prophecy had really snagged her imagination, and she went over it word by word, over and over again. 

“There’s...there’s some sort of mirror to the four horsemen,” she finally muttered. “Four shall ride, and four shall ride. That’s not a poetic license. There’s somebody out there that’s an opposite to the four horsemen. They’re also riding to Tadfield.”

“And that’s why I like you,” growled Crowley triumphantly. “Behold, the only waitress in the world that could figure this shit out!”

“Get stuffed” she said, but she was laughing and blushing. “I only noticed it because it mentioned Anathema by name. If it hadn’t…Crowley! Holy hell, you can’t drive on the berm!”

“Keep reading!”

She snapped her eyes back down to the prophecy.

“Three sharl-... _shall_ \- god, spare me from seventeenth century spelling - ride as two...three as two... OH! Crowley! Aziraphale said he was going to find a more receptive mind than mine, to get to Tadfield, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s him! He’s going to get into somebody’s mind, body, whatever, and somebody else will join him with that new body, and they’re going to ride to Tadfield, three as two! He’s really going to meet us there, Aziraphale’s going to be fine!”

Crowley stopped being snarky and started being a little spooked. Beth didn’t notice, gnawing her lower lip and still puzzling out the verse.

“Two shall ride in flame,” she whispered, and that’s when Crowley’s maniac driving habits brought them in sight of the M25.

It was on fire.

He let a little pathetic moan slip, and Beth looked up from the book to see it. Her eyes went wide, reflecting that hellish conflagration. And in the pit of her stomach, she suddenly knew exactly what was about to happen. 

She wished she could go back in time and sock Agnes Nutter right in the nose.

“I really fucked this one up,” he said, setting his jaw. “Sorry.”

“Wait, what?”

“My fault,” was the glum answer. “I designed the M25. Made it look like the dread sigil Odegra, devourer of cities.”

“Wait. Wait. Hold on. _What?_ ”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up.”

“You. _You._ Are personally responsible. For the traffic on the M25?”

Crowley made another keysmash sort of noise.

“You bastard!” she cried. “I’m going to personally make you pay for every hour I’ve spent in that mess! I’ll take it out of your hide!”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time. Get in my lap.”

“Buy me dinner first!” she protested, even as she scooted over the center console. “Why?”

“Because we’re going through that.”

He pointed at the wall of flame, and she blanched. He was serious, he was going to floor it through that hellfire barrier, because they had to. They had to get to Tadfield, because they had to get to Aziraphale. There was no other option.

“Oh, god.” She really, really had had enough of being on fire for the next rest of her life, please and thank you. Put her therapist on danger money, as the saying went, because she was gonna need it.

“Beth.” Crowley’s voice was tight and low, and she looked up at him as she climbed into his lap. “Do you trust me?”

She paused for just a moment, and then nodded slowly.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you believe in me?” he insisted. And she nodded again.

“Always.”

“Will you do what I say?”

“Absolutely.”

Crowley let out a relieved sort of sigh, and then he pulled onto the highway’s shoulder and accelerated. It was tricky with a lapful of waitress, but he managed.

“Grab the book,” he said, and she scrunched over enough to do so, pulling it against her chest. “And...hey. Just so you know. I do love you, Beth.”

Her soul soared at the verbal confirmation of his devotion, and she didn’t even flinch as the Bentley roared across the line of hellfire. She was too busy grinning like a fool, and trusting her demon, and loving him completely.

When the Bentley caught fire, the two of them were surrounded by a bubble of cool, fresh air. They zoomed across the motorway, and Crowley waved at the police officers guarding the barrier. Beth did not, because she was too besotted with her demon to notice.

It wasn’t until a mile down the road that Beth opened her eyes.

“Um...Crowley?”

“Ignore it, beautiful.”

“But…”

“ _Ignore it,_ beautiful. Trust me.”

“...Okay.”

The three hour drive to Tadfield was barely a blip on her radar, as she snuggled into her Crowley, book clutched against her chest, ignoring the fact that the rest of the car was _on fucking fire._

Although to be fair, it doesn’t take much for a human to ignore the world on fire. For evidence, see the current state of global politics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE, UPDATE, THOUGHT YOU'D SEEN THE LAST OF ME
> 
> Back from Vaycay, breaking my update days because I can. Follow me on tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack.


	9. Chapter 9

𝔄 𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔢𝔢𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔰𝔠𝔯𝔢𝔢𝔪, 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔩𝔞𝔠𝔨 𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔬𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔢𝔯𝔭𝔢𝔫𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔣𝔩𝔞𝔶𝔪𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞 𝔔𝔲𝔢𝔢𝔫𝔢 𝔴𝔦𝔩𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔮𝔲𝔦𝔠𝔨𝔰𝔦𝔩𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔰𝔢 𝔰𝔬𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔰 𝔫𝔬 𝔪𝔬𝔞𝔯.

Look at Crowley, doing 110 along the M40, headed for Oxfordshire. Even the most resolutely casual observer would notice a number of strange things about him. The clenched teeth, for one, or the dull red glow coming from behind his sunglasses. And the car. The car was a definite hint.

It should have fallen apart ages ago. Only the faith of his favorite human was keeping it intact, because she believed in him so much.

Friday had turned into Saturday at some point, and then into Saturday morning. Beth still cuddled into her demon, believing with all her might that they were perfectly safe in a car that was engulfed in flames. It helped a little, but it helped in the way that a gentle shower helped to put out a forest fire. Great in theory, minor in practice. It was the effort of holding it together that was causing Crowley to grit his teeth, and the geospatial feedback that was causing his eyes to glow bright red. That, and the absolute concrete need to keep his human love safe. 

He hadn’t felt like this since the 14th century.

Right up until Beth looked up at him, and smiled.

“I really do trust you,” she whispered, and pressed a gentle kiss on his cheek. That gave him at least another hundred miles of ongoing miracle.

But then, once they got to Tadfield, Crowley realized he had no idea which way the airbase actually was. Beth’s cell phone was a slag of melted silicon somewhere in Aziraphale’s shop, and Crowley had ditched his for the same reason he hadn’t turned on the Bentley’s radio; i.e. keeping Hell off his tail. (Hell’s GPS system was _frighteningly_ accurate.)

So he brought the Bentley to a stop and asked the first person passing by for directions. Totally unconcerned about the car being _on fucking fire._ And since it was so early in the morning, there was only one person around. He was a prissy-looking older gentleman, walking what looked like a sentient dust bunny on a short leash.

Crowley rolled down the window.

R.P. Tyler had already been accosted by four motorbike vandals, the Them, and a dotty old bird who thought it was funny to do a ventriloquist act at him at six in the morning. Schutzi had absolutely refused to do her business, and his stack of mental letters to the Tadfield Advertiser was already at 50k and growing. But this…

“Excuse me,” said the flash bastard wearing flash sunglasses, with a gorgeous woman curled up on his lap. “Can you tell me the way to the airbase?”

_Your car is on fire._

No. Tyler just couldn’t bring himself to say it. The man _had_ to know, didn’t he? He was sitting in the middle of it. This had to be some sort of practical joke. R.P. Tyler swallowed and pulled himself up to his full height. (Five foot four.)

“I think you must have taken a wrong turn about a mile back. The signpost blew down.” _Your car’s on fire._ Nope, still couldn’t say it. 

“That must be it,” said the flash bastard with a flashy smile. The ginger in his lap looked up, and through the flames, her eyes looked almost yellow. 

“Can you give us directions please, sir?” Her voice was ever so posh, and ever so subservient, and R.P. Tyler found himself obeying without conscious thought. (Customer service voice combined with phone sex voice, the deadliest weapon in the woman’s arsenal.)

“Thank you, sir,” she cooed when he was finished, and Crowley started to back up for a K-turn.

“Funny weather we’re having?” R.P. Tyler blurted out in a slightly strangled tone.

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

And with that, the Bentley was off again, leaving the poor man and his piddling poodle in the dust.

“IT’S PROBABLY BECAUSE YOUR CAR’S ON FIRE!”

Beth giggled at the man as they sped off.

“He’ll tell somebody,” she warned.

“Who’d believe him?” drawled the demon.

“I sure wouldn’t.”

***

When the Bentley finally oozed to a stop outside the Tadfield Air Base (“PEACE IS OUR PROMISE”) it was with a gasp and a cough and a wheeze. Which Beth and Crowley echoed as they staggered out of the driver’s side door. That was when the last three and a half hours of ongoing miracle and belief hit her like a bowling ball tossed straight up. Gravity did the work as the miracle ended, and she was huffing, palms flat on her knees, as if she was about to go into labor. The Nice and Accurate Prophecies was on the ground at her feet.

Crowley was slightly better off, but only because he didn’t need to breathe.

“You said...Did you say that to me...to make me do the thing?!” she demanded, still wheezing like her lungs were in an iron grip.

“What? No!” said Crowley, looking anywhere but her. “ _Noooo._ ”

“You utter berk,” she said, no venom in her tone. “I hate you.”

“Bullshit,” he said, smirking back at her, a smug grin on his face.

“I’m going full lesbian,” she promised. “I’m going to dump you and hook up with Anathema. We’ll move to Wales and raise sheep.”

“You won’t get performance like that out of a modern car!” declared Crowley, scooping his arm around Beth and dragging her away. She only just managed to pick up the book.

They walked toward the gate, which was blockaded by a slightly gobsmacked armed guard. He was staring at the Bentley, and who could blame him? Nearby, there was a woman with industrial-cleaner-orange hair, far too much makeup, and a crocheted dress on. Next to her was a weirdly familiar man, but before Beth could suss out why he was familiar, the woman spoke.

“Crowley!” But, hey. That was...that was Aziraphale’s voice!

“Aziraphale?” asked Beth, her jaw hanging open.

“Aziraphale!” declared Crowley, swaggering toward his angel as if he hadn’t a single worry in the world. “See you found a ride! Nice dress, it suits you.”

The angel demurred in his new body, and then gave a most unangelic grunt as Beth nearly tackled him into a desperate hug, trembling bodily. Aziraphale held her back, his cheek resting against hers. He was...shorter in this body. And also an older woman. Eh, whatever.

“God, I missed you, I’m sorry,” Beth whispered, grimacing in the embrace.

“It’s all right, dear lady. It’s fine. Although, next time? Please get _out_ of an inferno instead of looking for an extinguisher. Hmm?”

Beth laughed wetly, and nodded her agreement. “Sure, fine, I will. Crowley lied, that’s an awful dress,” she snickered as she pulled back ...and then recognized Shadwell.

“ _You._ ”

Shadwell took a step backwards away from the _hoor_ of Clapham. She started stalking toward the man, favoring strangulation to start, when Crowley snagged her by the collar and held her back.

“Don’t, please,” said Aziraphale, doing the same sort of holding back. “It was all a big misunderstanding.”

Beth gritted her teeth, and turned a look on her angel.

“He burned down your bookshop and almost killed me,” she said, her tone level and ugly.

“....That is true,” muttered the angel, turning a look on Shadwell that should have put him six feet under.

“Can we deal with this later?” asked Crowley, because that armed guard was starting to realize something really _weird_ was happening, and it was happening while he had a rifle in his hands, and he could make it _stop_ being weird fairly easily. It’d just be some paperwork and a dressing down…

Shadwell decided to ignore the others and marched right up to the poor, hapless guard and stuck his finger up.

“Ye see this finger, laddie? This finger could send ye to yer maker.”

Aziraphale sighed.

“Please, it’s dreadfully important that we speak to whomever is in charge here,” before interrupting himself in a different tone of voice, “He’s right, it’s ever s...please stop interrupting me I’m just trying to get a good word in yes I know but…”

“I’m gonna stop you two right there,” said the guard, who then corrected himself, “stop you, ma’am. We are on full lock-down to civilians.” (Even really weird ones, he thought to himself.) “So if you don’t turn around and leave, you’re trespassing, and will be prosecuted under penal code…”

“Crowley, do something!” pled Aziraphale.

That was when the gate behind the guard suddenly, inexplicably, slid aside. He turned to figure out what the hell was going on…

Beth spotted the Them from a distance. It was easy to do, the airbase occupied a pretty flat expanse. Four kids on bicycles, easy spot. But she wasn’t expecting them to pedal furiously past the now-open gate. All the adults present stared slack-jawed at the Them, and then all looked at each other.

“Okay,” drawled the guard. “That’s it. Those kids are in trouble, and so are you people. Don’t move.”

And he pointed the gun at Aziraphale as he triggered an alarm.

Granted, that was the precise moment that the Bentley finally exploded. Everybody jumped, but fortunately the guard still had the safety on his gun, otherwise Aziraphale would have had to find yet another body. The noise that left Crowley was heartbreaking, and he fell to his knees.

“Ninety years, and not a scratch on you,” he sighed. “Now look at you.”

“Crowley!” snapped Aziraphale. “He’s got a gun. Pointed at all of us! Do something!”

“ _I’m having a moment here!_ ” the demon snapped back, and Beth couldn’t help but slap her forehead.

“Really?!” she yelled at the two of them.

“I’m the nice one!” exclaimed Aziraphale, his borrowed mouth pouting. “You can’t expect me to do the dirty work!”

“You’re absolutely _not_ the nice one!” Beth snarked back. “You’re a ruthless bastard and you know it! Fix it!”

Aziraphale did a double take at his favorite human, even as the guard started forward again.

“Ma’am, I’m going to give you ten seconds to vacate the area…”

The guard suddenly disappeared without so much as an amusing noise. Everybody present relaxed, except Crowley, who picked up a miraculously unmelted engine crank that had dropped inches away from him. He picked it up and kissed it.

“Rest in peace,” he whispered, without letting go. And then he made his way over to Aziraphale. “Nice work on the soldier.”

“I do hope I haven’t sent him somewhere horrid,” he fretted, wringing his hands. Beth scoffed.

“Who caaaaaares? The cow is gooooooone,” she quoted, glaring at Aziraphale, who caught her meaning immediately. He winced, and then nodded.

“What cow?” asked Shadwell stupidly. Beth turned a _look_ on him.

“Keep your idiot mouth shut or I’ll rip your head off and spit down the stump.”

Shadwell wisely (for the first time in his life) kept his mouth shut. Aziraphale gave her a grimace, but she would follow through with that threat if pressed, regardless of angelic opprobrium.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your new body?” Crowley finally managed to edge in, and Aziraphale looked embarrassed.

“Ah, yes, Crowley, Beth, this is Madam Tracy.” “A pleasure, I’m sure.”

Shadwell waited, in vain, for his introduction, as he fumbled his enormous blunderbus across his chest. Which wasn’t great, since he was now fully armed in view of a base full of macho American soldiers. (Beth had opinions about Americans.) Several jeeps full of them were headed their way to make their lives more interesting.

“All right,” said Aziraphale, squaring his borrowed shoulders and lifting his chin. “I think it’s time for us to lick some serious butt!”

“ _Kick,_ ” groaned Crowley. “It’s kick butt, for Heaven’s sake.” And then the demon flinched. “Ugh, dunnow why I said that.”

So just like that, they started into the base, following the path that the Them had forged. And that’s when Beth twigged.

“Oh! Four shall ride!” she exclaimed. “Those kids on the bikes! Four of ‘em.”

“With a hellhound in the basket,” said Crowley, waving a hand. All the jeeps headed for them stopped suddenly, their engines turned into...well, best not to speculate, really.

“....That was a hellhound?” she asked. “It looked like a rat terrier mutt.”

“You think I don’t know a hellhound when I see it?”

She didn’t answer. “So… _that_ was the Antichrist?”

“Yup.”

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the alarms stopped blaring. Now that they were inside the place proper, they had no idea where to go. So, Crowley stole a Jeep. It had three sleeping soldiers in it, unfortunately, which meant they went the same way the first guard went.

“Oh, I hate this,” moaned the angel. Beth patted his hand.

“Greater good?” she tried, which earned her a deep frown. (It was only made worse by the fuchsia lipstick that Madam Tracy favored.)

The Jeep roared across the tarmac, not as flashy as the Bentley but certainly spritely. Beth snagged shotgun, so Aziraphale and Shadwell ended up in the back. And, yes, Shadwell still had that ridiculous old gun wedged between his legs. Their wild drive through the airbase was fairly quiet, aside from the wind rushing through the open top of the Jeep. Beth’s hair was a snarled, tangled mess by the time they reached the main hangar.

All around, there were soldiers sleeping. And a weird, heavy feeling in the air, as the sun started to fully rise over Tadfield.

Adam Young stepped out from around a corner, followed by his three friends, and took in the motley crew that piled out of the Jeep. He stared at them for a long moment, and then marched forward resolutely.

“Shoot him!” hissed Crowley at Shadwell, who’d gone numb with shock.

“He’s just a bairn,” he hissed back. “I cain’t shoot a bairn!”

“Aziraphale! Do something!”

Aziraphale started to take the gun off Shadwell (lends weight to a moral argument indeed…) when Adam stopped in front of Beth and grabbed her hand. Angel and demon froze, not sure if they should intervene or not.

“Hi,” said the Antichrist. “I’m Adam.”

Elizabeth Linda Graber, age 34, born to Robert and Beverly Graber (late) of Clapham, Lambeth Council, gazed down at the Antichrist and felt her heart break for him, more than just a little. This prince of this world. She wanted nothing more than to give him a big hug and a cup of cocoa. “Hi. I’m Beth.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, and there was a weird, worldly sadness in his tone, a tone which spoke of him not _wanting_ to know. “Listen, I need your advice, please.”

She nodded, still gripping this small boy’s hand in hers. “Of course. Anything you need.”

“The other four, they’re coming,” he said, and she realized he was talking about the Four Horsemen. “And I think I know how to beat them. But...I don’t know if I _should._ ”

The other children looked startled at that, as if this was something they thought they’d settled already. Aziraphale and Crowley looked startled, because the Antichrist had their waitress in his grip. Beth, though, she just smiled softly.

“Well, you know what they say,” she murmured. “Nice is different than good.”

She saw the realization hit that eleven year old boy, and she said a silent thank you to Stephen Sondheim. 

“Brilliant,” whispered the boy. “Thank you.”

Then he let go of her hand, and turned to Aziraphale.

“Why are you two people?” he asked, puzzled. He didn’t let the angel get a single word in edgewise. “That’s not right. Go back to being separate.”

Adam waved his hand, and then there Aziraphale was, back in his corporate form, patting himself down in astonishment. Madam Tracy shivered all over, barely suppressing a grin. Oh. Wow. Okay. That was something that never happened and nobody present would ever think on it again.

“Aziraphale!”

Beth leapt past Adam and pulled her angel into a proper hug this time, while Crowley lifted his sunglasses in awe. He locked eyes with the great beast, and for the first time in his entire existence, knew true fear. Adam was capable of erasing him so thoroughly, it would be as if he’d never existed. Even She couldn’t do that.

Brian made gagging noises in the back of his throat at the kiss that Beth planted on Aziraphale’s mouth. Wensleydale shushed him.

“Okay,” said Adam, squaring his shoulders and raising his head. Then, with a small smile curling up his lips, he reached into the open air and pulled.

“Come and see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have cribbed so much from the novel and the script book that I feel like I'm barely skirting the fair use laws. Please don't sue me, I'm broke, etc. etc. 1999 fanfic disclaimer etc.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack.


	10. Chapter 10

We all know how the next bit went. The scales, the crown, the sword. The horrors of humanity vanquished. Adam and Pepper and Wensleydale and Brian standing up to the most adulty adults ever. There was something poetic about it all, but blessed if Crowley could put his finger on it. Ineffable, right.

What’s new is that when Anathema and Newt finally stumbled onto the scene...

“Beth!” 

“Anathema!” 

The two women ran to each other, and started laughing. And hugging. 

“I got your book.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

And that was when Anathema surged forward and kissed Beth square on the mouth.

Crowley let an _almost_ appropriate amount of time pass before he let out a wolf whistle. Aziraphale was cocking his head, as if he had a bench of Olympic judges in his mind, and they were all holding up cards that read 10.

“Don’t they need to breathe?” whispered Brian, who was shushed by Pepper.

“Wasn’t she just kissin’ him, tho?” hissed Wensleydale, nodding at Aziraphale, and Adam shrugged.

“Seems to me people should kiss whoever they like, 's long as everybody involved is okay with it.”

So mote it be. Pepper nodded, because even at eleven, she was all for women’s agency and liberation. (Her mum was very vocal about it, after all. Pepper soaked up second wave feminism like most kids her age soaked up the names of Pokemon.)

It wasn’t until Newt cleared his throat behind them that they finally broke apart.

“Oh!” said Anathema, blushing fetchingly. “Beth, this is Newt. He helped a lot.”

“Hi, Newt!” said Beth with a grin, flushed and breathless. Newt’s first impression was of a strawberry-blonde whirlwind. He could see why Anathema was so taken with her.

“Erm, hi. Nice to meet you.”

“In a very accurate way,” grinned Anathema, who was now clutching her book again. It felt good, yet odd, like an old security blanket that’s been through the wash too many times. “So...that’s it, right? Apocalypse over?”

“I think so?” Beth turned to Adam and her angel and demon, all of whom just sort of shrugged. She shrugged back. “Good enough for me!”

That was when the rumbling started. Crowley grimaced, and then staggered.

“Oh, no,” he whispered, clutching his chest. “It’s not over. Nothing’s over.”

“What?” asked Aziraphale, startled. But then the angel was also gripping his hair with both hands, as the hellacious biofeedback started ringing in his ears. “Oh, dear. It’s…”

“Both heaven and hell still want their war,” ground out Crowley. “It’s personal. You there, boy, Antichrist, what’d you say your name was?”

“Adam Young.”

“Well done, you and your friends saved the world, gold stars all round. But this…”

The ground shook even harder, sending all humans, antichrists and occult figures staggering. Anathema dropped the book to grab onto Beth’s arm and Newt’s hand. A page, knocked loose by the heat of the fire and the ill-treatmeant it had received, flapped in the wind and smacked Aziraphale right in the face. He grabbed it and stuffed it in his pocket, an automatic reflex.

There was a stench of sulfur and a blinding flash of light as the trembling stopped. There on the tarmac stood Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelzebub, in the flesh. Beth did the only thing she could think of; she grabbed Adam and shoved him behind her and Anathema, much to his astonishment.

“Gabriel,” whispered Aziraphale.

“Lord Beelzebub,” wheezed Crowley. “What an honor.”

“Crowley the traitor,” came the buzzed proclamation. (How they managed to buzz without a single sibilant in that sentence is to this day a mystery.)

“That’s not a nice word,” said the demon, tipping his nose down so the wounded expression in his eyes was visible.

“The other words I have for you are worzzz. Where’s the boy?”

“Who the hell are they?” whispered Newt. Ah, another not-religious person, at least Beth wasn’t the only one anymore.

“Um, nobody we want to meet in the flesh,” Beth said back, as Gabriel noticed her. That icy purple gaze landed on her, and she felt her entire soul freeze as recognition crossed his face. She got the distinct impression he was adding her to a Celestial To-Do list, and moaned a little.

“He’s over there,” said the archangel with an impatient gesture. Beth found herself moved bodily aside by sheer force of will, as she and Anathema were tugged apart. She ended up nearly colliding with Crowley, who caught and steadied her. Newt did the same for Anathema.

Adam Young stood unprotected against the representatives of heaven and hell, but only looked a little perplexed. And perhaps just a _touch_ rebellious.

Gabriel walked up to the boy, with a patronizing smile on his lips, even as his eyes remained flat and emotionless. He crouched down just a little, hands on his knees, and got eye to eye with the Antichrist. “Young man… _Adam._ Armageddon must restart, right now. A temporary inconvenience is not going to get in the way of the greater good, kiddo.”

At least Beelzebub had the good sense to keep a respectful distance and a respectful tone. They just observed the boy, and the other collected humans, gears turning quickly, buzzing like flies on dung. 

“It’z yet to be decided what greater anythying it getz in the way of,” they reminded Gabriel, who waved that off. “But the battle must be decided now. That is your dezztiny, o prince. It is written. Start the war. ...Pleazze.”

Adam narrowed his eyes, and then turned to look at Beth. She could practically see her words to him marching along the frontal cortex of his brain, and she nodded, egging him on.

These two seemed reasonable. They sounded almost _nice_.

Nice is different than good.

“You two want to end the world, just so you can see whose gang is better?”

“Obviously,” said Gabriel, jovial and unconcerned. Now the boy was getting it! “That’s the Great Plan. The whole point of the creation of the Earth!”

“I’ve got this,” interrupted Beelzebub, who didn’t smile so much as grimace, an expression they shared with Gabriel. “Adam, onze this is over, you’re going to rule the world. Don’t you want to rule the world?”

Adam set his jaw, and then frowned deeply.

“He just said the world was ending. What’s gonna be left for me to rule?”

Pepper grinned like she’d just won the lottery. Adam had actually listened to her! Victory!

Beelzebub and Gabriel started looking nervous.

“And besides, it’s hard enough having to think of things for Pepper and Wensley and Brian to do all the time so they don’t get bored. I’ve got all the world I want.”

The Antichrist, The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of This World, Spawn of Satan, glanced around at all the others, and smiled a cherubic sort of smile. Anathema gasped, because she could _finally_ see his aura, and it was _beautiful._

“Also, they’ve got to make up their own minds. Seems like that’s kind of the whole point, innit?”

That was all it took. Gabriel dropped the pleasant facade and raged, angelic power snapping and crackling off him like static off a wool suit.

“You can’t refuse to be who you are!” he growled. “Your birth and destiny are part of the Great Plan!”

Adam was about to speak up again, when he was interrupted by a genteel, polite sort of throat clearing. The Principality Aziraphale, protector of London, England, Europe, and beyond, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, stepped forward.

Because he’d just remembered that, _technically_ , Principalities outrank Archangels.

“Excuse me,” he said unctuously, a knowing little smile on his face. “You keep talking about the Great Plan.”

Gabriel recognized that look, and he turned his rage away from Adam. “Aziraphale, maybe you should _keep your mouth shut._ ” Because Gabriel had also just realized that he was actually lower on the pecking order after all. 

“Only, I’m not clear on one thing,” said Aziraphale, eyes bright and mouth hard. Beth gulped. She’d never seen this side of her angel before. Crowley, meanwhile, _had_ , and was looking almost giddy. “The Great Plan. Is it also the Ineffable Plan?”

“It is written!” said Beelzebub, rolling their eyes. “There shall be a world, and it shall last for six thousand years and end in fire and flame…”

“Yes, that is the Great Plan, nobody’s denying that, but is it the same as the Ineffable Plan?”

“They’re the same thing, surely!” cried Gabriel, the facade fallen away entirely now. Crowley cackled maliciously.

“You don’t know!” he said, untangling himself from Beth and stepping forward. “You don’t _know!_ Everyone knows the Great Plan. But the Ineffable Plan...well, it’s ineffable. By definition, we _can’t_ know it. Be a real shame if doing the Great Plan meant you went directly against Her Ineffable one, eh?”

Now Crowley and Aziraphale were flanking Adam, who glanced up at the two of them with a smile.

“I’d think about that real hard if I was you two,” proclaimed Adam, crossing his arms over his chest.

“But it izz written!” wailed Beelzebub, like a toddler having a tantrum before nappy time.

“But it might be written differently somewhere else.” That? Was from Beth, finally speaking up, chin raised and standing tall between her angel and her demon. Both of whom beamed extraordinary smiles at her. “Somewhere you can’t read it.”

“In bigger letters,” said Aziraphale.

“Underlined,” added Crowley.

“Twice,” suggested Aziraphale.

“Perhaps this isn’t just a test of the world. Maybe it’s a test of you people, too.” Crowley couldn’t resist rubbing dirt in the wound just a little, and Beth subtly elbowed him in the ribs. Enough, demon.

“God does not play games with the universe!” snarled Gabriel, going a bit red in the face. But even that snarl sounded worried and Beth couldn’t help herself; as much as she was trying to keep out of his way, she let out a long, disdainful snort of laughter at that. She didn’t even flinch as he glared at her.

Crowley whistled. “Whoo-whee, where have _you_ been?” 

Aziraphale smiled, smiled with his whole body, and it was that cat in the cream smile he was so good at. Smug, self-satisfied, and stuffed.

“Are you certain? Are you absolutely, one hundred percent, totally and completely certain that Her creation is to end? Be honest, now.”

Both archangel and demon lord went very still, and then took two small steps back. They resembled politicians on opposite sides, getting their heads together for a bipartisan compromise.

“I’m...going to need to talk to the Head Office,” muttered Gabriel, just loud enough to carry. “How I’m going to get ten million angels to stand down from war footing, ugh, it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“Yeah?” snarked Beelzebub. “Try telling ten million demons to put down their weaponzz and go back to work!”

“At least we know whose fault this is.” Both angel and demon turned a horrid, murderous glare on Crowley and Aziraphale, who both just smiled and waved. (In retrospect, Beth would suggest that perhaps the cheerful wave was the reason it went pear-shaped.)

Then Gabriel turned back to Adam, the rage and confusion gone, replaced with barely-disguised contempt.

“Young man, you were put on this Earth to do one thing only: To _end_ it. You...are a disobedient little brat.”

Adam Young stuck one finger up his nose and started gurning. Beelzebub gurgled in dismay.

“I’m telling your father about this!” they said, as a cloud of flies started circling their head, agitated and awful. “He will not be pleazzzed.” The cloud of flies enveloped them completely, and then dispersed. They were gone. And with a flash of light, so was Gabriel.

“Weren’t they odd?”

That was the quiet, baffled voice of Madam Tracy, who was already mentally scabbing over the encounter. Shadwell looked to be in the same boat, having gone the color of old oatmeal. (Or maybe that was his usual color, it was hard to tell.)

“Adam, I wanna go home,” whined Brian, to which Wensley nodded his fervent agreement. Beth couldn’t blame them, she was in her thirties and wanted to go home. She couldn’t even imagine what it must be like for a bunch of eleven year olds.

Beth glanced over at Anathema, who was trying to rebind her book, but it was already falling apart, pages dissolving into nothingness at a touch. The magic that had kept the book intact for three hundred and fifty years was finally failing. Several generations of witches in the Device family hadn’t planned for it to last past the apocalypse.

“Oh, no,” sighed Anathema, who didn’t sound as upset about it as she should have. Like it was more of a bother than the destruction of the foundation of her life. But Newt had that well in hand, kneeling next to her and trying to help.

Hmmm. Maybe she and Anathema had a lot more in common than she thought.

So thinking, she turned to Crowley and Aziraphale, and took both their hands. Crowley took off his sunglasses, even, and turned a killer smile on both her and his angel. That was when _they_ took hands, and Beth gasped like a child on Christmas day.

“About _fucking_ time!” she whispered fiercely, making Aziraphale blush.

“Dear lady, please. Your language.”

“Oh, come off it, angel, I heard you say it too.”

“Whaaaat?” gasped Crowley, looking even more delighted than before. “Ooooh, angel…”

“Don’t,” warned Aziraphale, still blushing.

Of course, since they were all grasping hands, they all felt the pulse of pure hellish maleficence course through Crowley. Like a high-tension wire, they all were shot bolt-upright by it, and Aziraphale groaned in agony as Beth crumpled.

“No,” moaned the demon. “No no no nono no!”

“What is it?” asked Beth, barely keeping herself upright.

“They did it, they told his father.”

Adam Young looked around, and there, no less than fifty meters away, the ground of the tarmac was starting to shift and bubble, like quicksand on a hotplate.

“Oh no.”

“Maybe it’s a volcano?” asked Newt inanely.

“No such thing in Britain,” answered Anathema, as if something like facts were appropriate right now. “It’s really angry, I can feel it, it’s...getting closer.”

The Them all took hands. Hey, it had worked before against the Four Horsemen. Maybe it would work against the devil, too. Aziraphale, still nursing a splitting headache, reached down and retrieved his sword, the one that the erstwhile War had wielded.

Beth’s jaw dropped. Oh no. A queer enby with a sword. Her ultimate weakness.

“It was nice knowing you,” said Crowley, a little sadly, and Aziraphale huffed in annoyance.

“Stop that!”

“It’s over, angel! We are _fucked._ ”

“BULLSHIT! Think of something! Or…” He glanced at his sword, and then at Beth, and then at Crowley. “Or I’ll never speak to you again.” 

It wasn’t a threat, it was a prediction of the future if the devil got his due. Crowley looked alarmed, and then he threw his hands wide in a gesture that Beth didn’t recognize.

She blinked. Turned her head. Let out a slow breath.

About fifteen feet away from her, Aziraphale and Crowley were unfurling their wings over the backdrop of a vast, flawless desert. Their forms were hazy, like seen through a mirage. Aziraphale was crowned, and robed in cerulean, holding his sword in one hand and a large, ornate scepter in the other, and he was absolutely _covered_ with blue, blinking eyes. But he was also the sweet, slightly plump bookseller who wore too much tartan, _at the same time._ Crowley was a little simpler, but simple doesn't mean not as powerful. He was all sensuous curves now, iridescent and crawling, bullet head cocked to one side. A fine layer of blood red scales covered his front, and the finest sable on his back, and his eyes were yellow all through. He was the handsomest snake in a slim-cut suit she’d ever seen.

Aziraphale’s wings glowed white. Crowley’s sucked in the light and turned it black.

And in front of them, Adam Young.

He had no ethereal or occult form, no hidden wings or scales or disfigurements or perfections. He was just a golden-haired human boy in scuffed trainers and a slightly grubby hoodie.

Adam glanced around at all three of them, and he blinked a little when he spotted Beth. In fact, both Crowley and Aziraphale did too, as if they were surprised to see her there. She looked down.

She was still in her work uniform. White blouse, black pencil skirt. Half and half. Her hair wasn’t gold and it wasn’t red. Half and half. Her eyes weren’t blue and they weren’t yellow. Half and half. She loved them as men and she loved them as women. Half and half. She was kind, and she was angry, and she was beautiful, and she was cruel, and…

“Oh.”

Adam Young smiled at her understanding, and winked at her.

And then he turned back to the angel and the demon.

“Adam, listen. Your father’s coming to destroy you. Destroy all of us, probably.”

“ _My_ dad wouldn’t hurt anybody.” Only Beth heard the subtle emphasis in Adam’s words. It was the kind of emphasis that only a human could parse, the subtle distinction of knowing who your real friends and family were. The kind of thing that wouldn’t register to an angel and a demon, who only had one Father, as it were, who was also Mother, and was also very hands-off.

“Not your human dad,” snapped Crowley, proving the point. “Your infernal one. Satan. He’s piss…” he cut off after Aziraphale cleared his throat. This was a child, please, dear boy. “He’s pretty angry. And he’s coming.”

“What do you want me to do? Fight him?”

It wasn’t bravado. It wasn’t a boast. It was an eleven year old child pointing out to eternal beings what they were really asking. Beth caught Crowley’s eyes, and shook her head slowly.

“I don’t think violence is the answer,” said Aziraphale sadly. “You’ll have to think of something else.”

“I’m just a kid.”

Beth gave the boy a sad smile, and then stepped forward to open her arms into a hug. He flew into her arms and she grunted a little. He was heavier than he looked.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she whispered down to him. “You’re not responsible for this. You’re right, you’re just a kid. But...you’re a kid who’s had a lot of love in his life. You’re so lucky, Adam. Don’t ever forget that, okay?”

“That’s right,” agreed Aziraphale. “Being a kid...that’s not a bad thing to be. We’d hoped you’d be Heaven incarnate. We’d worried you’d be Hell incarnate. But you’re neither. You’re _Human_ incarnate. And, well?”

Aziraphale looked at Beth, still cradling the child in her arms, and smiled.

“We happen to think humans are pretty nifty.”

“...Nifty? Really?” Crowley looked like he wanted to gag. “Adam, reality will listen to you right now. You _can_ change things. But that doesn’t mean it has to be the end, for better or worse. When I restart time…”

“I won’t have long, I know.”

“And whatever happens,” Aziraphale murmured, “we’re all with you.”

Adam looked up at Beth one last time. “Hey, thank you.”

“You’re so welcome. Thank _you._ ”

Adam grinned his bright, golden grin.

Aziraphale held up his sword, and it lit up like phosphorus dropped in water. Crowley pulled his sunglasses back on, and manifested the engine crank from the late Bentley. And then they were back on Earth, Beth slightly behind her angel and demon as they faced down Satan erupting from the ground.

Adam stepped forward.

Satan didn’t get a word in edgewise. The fallen angel spotted his son, yes, and opened his mouth, but then…

Adam looked around. He looked down. He looked up. His face took on an expression of calculated innocence. There _was_ a moment of conflict, but in the end, Adam was on his own ground. Ultimately and always, his _own_ ground.

Tadfield was his. And the only way Tadfield could continue being his was if it was attached to the rest of this smelly, rotten, stinking, foul, fetid, fuming, foggy world. So, by the transitive property, the world was his as well. His and Pepper’s, and Wensley’s and Brian’s, and Anathema’s and Beth’s and Newt’s, and his mom and dad, and even cranky old R.P. Tyler, and everybody in the village, and everybody in England, and everybody in the continog, and America, and Australia, and all the kingdoms thereof, amen. They were free. He didn’t need to rule them, he just needed to protect them.

He raised one hand, and moved it in a blurred half-circle, like he was picking an apple off a tree.

Aziraphale and Crowley felt the world _change._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So did anybody catch the whole "half and half" thing before I dropped it in this chapter? :D
> 
> Follow me on tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack.


	11. Chapter 11

_And I know things now, many valuable things, that I hadn’t thought to explore. Do not put your faith in a cape and a hood, they will not protect you the way that they should. And take extra care with strangers, even flowers have their dangers, and though scary is exciting…._

_Nice is different than good._

Satan was gone, and all was chaos, but in that carefully controlled way that everybody was having hysterics and waiting for a level-headed adult to take over from there.

(Nobody mentioned how Shadwell had stepped in front of Madam Tracy, vowing to protect the _hoor_ of Babylon, and his ridiculous gun had gone off and _just missed_ Lucifer Morningstar, so that was lucky.)

(And nobody mentioned how Newt and Anathema were already clinging to each other in fright, and looking for Beth, and spotting her elsewhere.)

(And nobody mentioned how Beth was clinging to her angel and demon in a tight, shaky, three-way hug.)

(And nobody mentioned how the Them pedaled off quickly when they saw the maroon Morris Traveler pulling up on the tarmac, and the level-headed adult actually took over.) (𝔒𝔫𝔢 𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔢𝔰 𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔩𝔶...)

The bottom line was, it was lunchtime, everybody was starving, and the soldiers were getting back to work, ignoring the weird collection of interlopers. Nuclear missiles deactivated, tensions ratcheted back down, world leaders exchanged rattled phone calls, and Newt offered everybody a ride back to Jasmine Cottage in Dick Turpin.

Beth took one look at the car, and shook her head vehemently. She’d seen the [Jeremy Clarkson video](https://youtu.be/QQh56geU0X8) about these death traps, thank you very much.

So….Crowley stole a Jeep. Nobody noticed.

(Oh, and for those of you wondering, Shadwell and Madam Tracy got a lift back to the city bus by Mr. Young, after first retrieving her scooter. That’s a story in and of itself.)

***

The five of them ended up at Jasmine Cottage, as Anathema and Newt tried to rustle up a hearty meal as they possibly could from Anathema’s paltry larder. (She’d thought the world was going to end, after all. Why waste food in a big grocery shop?)

Aziraphale gratefully took a cup of tea, and Crowley miracled himself up some bourbon.

Beth was lingering in the doorway to the kitchen, watching Anathema and Newt dance around each other. There was organic peanut butter and whole wheat bread, a crime against cuisine. Aziraphale would never.

“This is hopeless,” Newt finally said. “Listen, I’m gonna run down the shop and get us some take away.”

“Good idea,” said Anathema, carefully not looking at Beth. Newt pressed a quick kiss to Anathema's cheek, and then squeezed past Beth with a hurried apology. She waited until she heard the wheezing _puttputtputt_ of Dick Turpin moving down the lane that she spoke.

“ _Soooo._ Kinsey scale number?” she teased, and Anathema went red.

“I thought it was a six!” she said, but she had a smile on her face, embarrassed as it was. “But...I guess it’s actually a five.”

“Mine’s a solid three, don’t look at me.” Beth crossed the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Anathema’s waist from behind, and the brunette melted. “And...how about poly? Are you?”

“Never had the chance to try it,” she whispered back. “I, uh. My mom discouraged me from dating for a long time. And I’ve only ever had one girlfriend, and she wasn’t serious. Um.”

She winced a little, and wriggled free.

“Newt and I took each other’s virginity,” she confessed. Beth looked a little worried.

“Oh. Wow. You alright?”

“I'm ...yeah. I’m as okay as I’m gonna be, considering that Agnes prophesied that and left me snide little notes about it. Like I didn’t have a choice.” And that, really was the down and dirty truth of it. Anathema felt totally adrift now, her life's work completed at the age of twenty-two. She had an entire, unprophesied future ahead of her, a book shaped hole in her aura that was collapsing with a crash. It really had taken this long for the emotions of it all to hit her, and she let out a long sigh.

“You did,” said Beth firmly, seeing the look on Anathema's face, and guessing to a bit of what she was going through. So, she decided to underline it twice. “You could have said _no._ ”

Anathema looked tired at that, but then thoughtful. And then a slow smile curled up her lips. “Yeah. I guess I could have. But, he’s...sweet. I actually do like him. He was a witchfinder, and, well...”

“What's a witchfinder...yannow what? I don't wanna know. Anyway...we can both have boyfriends,” Beth said, slowly grinning. “You can have Newt, and I can have those two boneheads out there. And you and I can...you know. Get serious. If you want to.”

Anathema looked like she was about to ascend the mortal realm and transport bodily to heaven. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life,” she confessed breathlessly. “I’d like that.”

Beth closed the distance again, only this time grabbed Anathema so they were face to face. They were about the same height, so it was easy to gaze into her brown-black eyes.

“I was just about to say the same thing about you.”

And then they were kissing again. Only this time it wasn’t urgent, or hurried, or rough. No, this kiss was slow, and tender, and immensely sensual. It made Beth feel a little weak in the knees, and Anathema was sparking off witchy power like a firecracker.

Aziraphale and Crowley both made vague noises in the other room. Not quite uncomfortable, not quite lustful, not quite appreciative. Anathema broke the kiss, and raised an eyebrow.

“Just how connected to your emotions are they?” was her question, and Beth flushed a little. Anathema _looked_ as she’d been taught, and saw the vibrant rainbow colors pulsating out of her new girlfriend, and the bright gold and bright crimson threads that arced out of her at the pressure points. “...Huh.”

“Look, it’s a long story…”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” smirked Anathema. “Hey, I’m not upset. Just...we’ll have to figure out a way to dampen that when I get you into bed.”

Beth blinked, and then doubled over blushing, hiding her face in her hands.

Aziraphale and Crowley started guffawing.

***

Newt did a good, good thing, and returned with five enormous bags of curry take away, which were pounced on by all attending. (Even Crowley, who’d depleted his energy with several large-grade miracles over the last twelve hours. He’d prefer to sleep, but eating was a good substitute.) Beth had a special soft spot for butter chicken, and jealously guarded that particular box. And they all talked. Aziraphale and Crowley filled Newt and Anathema in on the full story, their full story. Anathema asked pertinent questions, Newt asked the harp-and-halos question, which got him the same response Beth had gotten. They all of them swore to secrecy.

“Where are you from?” asked Newt to Beth at one point, and she swallowed a mouthful of food before answering.

“Clapham.”

Newt went very still, his mouth falling open.

“So am I,” he said, gobsmacked. 

“Oh, wow. What block are you on?”

He told her. Now it was her turn to be gobsmacked.

“You live three blocks away from me.”

“What a small world!” piped up Aziraphale.

“I’m starting to think it’s not.” That was from Crowley, who’d been following this exchange with a passive sort of interest, before narrowing his eyes at Newt suspiciously.

“Why’d you name your car Dick Turpin?” he demanded.

“Oh. Erm. Because everywhere it goes, it holds up traffic.”

There was a long pause, and then Beth and Aziraphale burst out laughing, getting the joke and appreciating it deeply. Anathema and Crowley did not, because...well. American and Demon.

“Very good, Newt,” said Beth, with a big brilliant grin, and Newt started to understand why Anathema was so flustered around her.

***

After lunch, and a brief nap for everyone (even Aziraphale, who claimed he was exhausted just to go along with everybody), they went their separate ways.

“Stay the rest of the weekend?” Anathema whispered to Beth, who was smoothing down her black skirt.

“Nnnhk, I can’t,” she sighed. “I do wish I could. I _do_. But I’m on shift tomorrow at three. Sunday dinner, you know?”

“Where do you work?” Anathema finally asked, and Beth blinked.

“I didn’t tell you that?” Anathema shook her head. “The Ritz.”

“...What?” Anathema’s eyes went wide, impressed. “You...you work at the most expensive hotel in London?”

“Yeah. In the restaurant. I’m a waitress.”

“Wow,” breathed Anathema. “I had dinner there with my mom when I was...ten? Eleven? It’s so fancy. God, you must meet so many interesting people.”

Beth looked to Crowley and Aziraphale, tidying up and getting ready to go. And she smiled.

“You could definitely say that.”

***

They spent a bit of time debating, but eventually agreed that leaving the Jeep in the village would be less conspicuous than driving it to London and abandoning it somewhere. That left very little option to get home. (Beth asked if they could just miracle a teleport to London. Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged a glance, and then shook their heads. She got the impression there was something they weren’t telling her about it, but dropped it.) So. The three of them ended up sitting at a bus stop, waiting to miracle a bus back to London. It would undoubtedly take hours and hours. 

Beth missed her phone. Candy Crush was such a boon to humanity. Who needed boredom when phones could provide hours of entertainment?

She sat between the two of them, clasping their hands, and smiling shyly to herself. Crowley eventually muttered, “Bugger this for a lark,” and snapped his fingers. A very nice bottle of wine appeared in his fist, and to Beth’s practiced, Ritz-trained eye, it was a bottle of…

“1921 Chateauneuf?” she asked, incredulous. “Holy merde. Did you just miracle up that bottle?”

“Mmhmm,” hummed the demon, raising an eyebrow as he raised the bottle to his lips.

“Every vintner in France just dropped dead.”

Aziraphale chuckled. The bottle was passed down the line, in order of seniority, which made Beth pout a little. Aziraphale passed the wine back to her with a stolen kiss.

“I’m sorry about the Bentley,” she finally said, passing the bottle back to Crowley. He made a non-committal noise in the back of his throat. Aziraphale sighed.

“That’s right, I’d forgotten. I know how much you loved it. Would...could you miracle it back?”

“Nah, wouldn’t be the same,” drawled the demon. “I had it from new, you know.”

“I do, yes.”

There was a van moving with purpose down the lane; the three of them ignored it.

“Just imagine what could have happened if you’d been at all competent.” Beth leveled a look at her angel and her demon, who both looked affronted. They both made various noises of agreement. And annoyance. And Crowley pinched her upper arm viciously and she yelped.

The van moved closer, passed them. Stopped. And then slowly backed up with a repetitive beep. All three on the bench looked up, annoyed, as the logo for 𝕀ℕ𝕋𝔼ℝℕ𝔸𝕋𝕀𝕆ℕ𝔸𝕃 𝔼𝕏ℙℝ𝔼𝕊𝕊 filled their vision. A mousy looking man hopped out, a sort of working class Stan Laurel. He trotted over to the bench and gave a perfect customer service smile at Aziraphale.

“Pardon me, sir, pick up for delivery, address said fifth bus bench, Hogback Road, Tadfield, it’s just that there’s supposed to be, erm. Crown, scales, and sword?”

“Oh! Of course.” Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and manifested all of the above into a recyclable cardboard box hidden under the bench, not fully shut yet. (That nobody at the air base had spotted those weapons of mass destruction lying around was nothing short of a bloody miracle.) The delivery man didn’t notice its sudden appearance, but did peek inside the flaps to make sure.

“Much obliged, sir, much obliged. You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had today. All over the world and beyond, it seemed like. If I told the missus what’d happened to me today, she wouldn’t believe a word, and that's God's honest truth. Oh, sign here, sir?”

There was a clipboard thrust under Aziraphale’s nose, and he signed with a pen he pulled from his inner coat pocket. It had a brass nib.

“Thank you, sir, thank you, and a fine evening to your lovely lady and your handsome bloke, sir, my missus always says, it takes all kinds to run the world and no mistake, well, guess she’s right, she’s a smart one, my Maud. G’night, sir. Sir. Ma’am.”

And with that, the man was gone, and so was his van, and there was a beat.

Angel, demon, and waitress all collapsed into wheezing laughter, practically falling all over each other. The bottle of wine went around again.

After a moment, Crowley sobered. “Adam’s human again,” he said, out of the blue, and both Aziraphale and Beth looked up at him.

“Really? He really gave up all that power?”

“As far as I can tell, yes,” agreed Aziraphale, as Beth contemplated that. It was a damn good thing that the boy was still a boy, and had grown up in a good home, with good friends, and a good environment. If the Great Plan had meant letting him grow into a jaded adult with bills and heartbreak...the world might have actually ended. Hell. If she herself had been offered the power to destroy the world about a decade ago? She might have damn well taken it out of pure selfishness. That was a thought that made her ache, somewhere down in her gut.

“Angel. What if She planned it this way all along? From the very beginning?”

“Could have. I wouldn’t put it past Her.”

“We were never exactly on speaking terms,” said Crowley, weighed down by six thousand years of angst. “She wasn’t exactly one for a straight answer. She’d just _smile._ As if She knew something you didn’t.”

Beth frowned.

“Isn’t that...kind of the point, though, Crowley?”

There was a long silence, as if she’d pushed too far and wounded too deep. Just like when she’d told Aziraphale he was actually rebelling, she was telling Crowley to have a bit of faith. But then Crowley surprised her, and slung an arm around her shoulders.

“Aziraphale, we clearly need to figure out a way to canonize her. So she can stick around and smack common sense into us for the rest of eternity.”

“ _Oooooooh_ no!” she immediately protested. “I’m not going full immortal. I’ve read what happens to vampires. I refuse outright.”

The Oxford bus appeared in the distance, a long hiss of air-brakes signaling its appearance. 

“It says Oxford on the front,” says Aziraphale, looking disappointed.

“Yeah, but he’ll drive to London.”

It took a second, but the angel caught on. Beth sniffed.

“You’re going to make a local driver on the graveyard shift take us to London?” she said, her voice flat with solidarity for her working-class brother. Crowley rolled his eyes.

“He’ll be fine, he’ll get double pay, his bus won’t clock the miles, and he’ll still get home to his family on time. Is that okay?”

“...Thank you,” she simpered as she climbed on board.

Aziraphale let an _almost_ appropriate amount of time pass before he leaned into his demon.

“ _Whipped._ ”

“Shut up!”

“I suppose I should go back to my shop?” said Aziraphale as they got...not comfortable, but seated. Beth saw that the seats were two-by-two, and immediately sat in front of them.

“...It’s gone, angel. Burned down, remember?”

“Oh.” Aziraphale and Beth contemplated that event in their own special ways, causing the latter to curl up on her seat and wrap her arms around her legs. Crowley made a little whining noise in the back of his throat, and when Beth looked up, the row they sat in sat three.

It didn’t take long to curl up in between her angel and demon.

“Come stay at mine,” said Crowley. “Both of you.”

“My...side wouldn’t…”

“You’re not on their side anymore, Aziraphale,” she said, voice firm and sad. “You’re on our side.”

Aziraphale was still for a long, long moment, as both human and demon waited for their angel to deny them again, breaking their hearts. But...Aziraphale nodded. Slowly, hesitantly, but clearly.

“I’m on our side,” agreed the (former?) angel, as they both pounced on him to cover his face with fond kisses.

***

They got off in Mayfair. SoHo was...off limits right now. None present wanted to even come close to the charred mess that was the bookshop. (Although Aziraphale had a sneaking suspicion that there was a pleasant surprise waiting for him there…) Crowley let them into the flat, forgetting entirely what he’d done in his office not twenty-four hours prior. Beth crossed the threshold without hesitation, but Aziraphale went stiff and gasped quietly.

“Crowley,” he whispered. “You...you opened it.”

Beth frowned, and turned back to her loves, as Crowley flinched, remembering.

“I told you, just in case it went pear-shaped,” he mumbled.

“What?” asked Beth. Aziraphale looked on the verge of tears again.

“He used holy water,” he breathed. “Here. In this flat.”

“You _what?!_ ” She remembered what Aziraphale told her what holy water could do to a demon, and then she paused. Thought about it for a second. And then turned a glare on Aziraphale. “You gave him _holy water?!_ ”

“He was going to rob a church and risk his life!” cried Aziraphale, not denying it. Beth wanted to slap them both.

“I’m...good fucking lord, how did you two survive without me for six thousand years?” she asked rubbing her temples. “Aziraphale, we're having words later. Crowley, we're having words _now_ , imagine Aziraphale asking for the angelic equivalent?”

“Hellfire.”

“Right! That! Imagine Aziraphale came to you and said, ‘Jolly good dear boy, I do need some of that dashed hellfire in case of the bally blitz!’”

Aziraphale choked on his own breath. Crowley did too.

“Shut up! It’s not funny! How dare you do that to each other!”

Angel and demon choked again, this time stuffing down their laughter. And they both looked utterly wrecked.

“I melted a demon trying to discorporate me and send me back to the sulphur pits!” said Crowley with a pointed, pained tone. “I never would have used it on myself.”

“Crowley....”

And then they were embracing, like she’d never seen them do before. Never like this, fully touching, arms around each other. Crowley especially melted into that embrace, going all boneless and loose, like a boa draping itself over a tree branch.

“Angel…”

“I only wanted to keep you safe,” Aziraphale whispered back. “That’s all.”

“I know, I know.”

They kissed. The kind of kiss that’s featured on movie posters and adverts for various rubbery things. Hot and intense and six thousand years in the making. There's a bit in the Princess Bride (one of Aziraphale's favorite books, for the record, he really did have a soft spot for Billy Goldman) that talks about the top ten rated kisses in all of history, how the one between Buttercup and Westley left them all behind, etc. Buttercup and Westley would have happily given up their number one spot for this one, and gotten popcorn besides.

Beth squeaked.

They didn’t break the clinch, but Aziraphale opened up one arm to her, and then she was folded into that hug so easily. Crowley kissed her first, and then her angel, and then they were back to kissing each other again. She gave in to temptation and started kissing up Crowley’s neck, which got a noise out of him that should have been illegal.

He snapped his fingers. The holy water stain was gone, and so were all of their clothes.

“Crowley!” cried Aziraphale, his entire angelic body blushing hot red.

“That was my work uniform!” cried Beth, just as distressed as her angel.

“I’ll make you another one,” he growled, scooping his arms around their waists and steering them toward the bedroom.

“One hundred and eighty years, I had that coat,” the angel grumbled, but he was already leaning into Crowley. Beth made it to the ridiculous Bauhaus bed first, to sit back against the pillows and watch the show. And what a show it was. Her angel and demon were deliciously contrasting, soft and hard, round and whipcord thin. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and when they kissed, it was art. She wished she could draw, or paint, or sculpt. Something to indelibly capture that moment forever, in granite, in marble. (Of course she’d seen _that_ sculpture in his flat. She’d just smirked at him for it.)

She didn’t realize she was moaning softly until they turned to her. Aziraphale looked flustered, and Crowley looked downright sinful.

“Like what you see?” he asked her, golden eyes glinting with mischief.

“Mm _hmm._ ”

Crowley gave Aziraphale a little nudge toward the bed, and the angel went, still a little starry eyed. When he met Beth there, she was treated to the most delicious kiss he’d given her yet, slow and warm.

“...No,” she whispered, breaking the kiss after a moment. Angel and demon both stopped dead.

“No?”

“No,” she echoed. “Not me first. _You_ two.”

“Beth…” That was from Aziraphale, who was blinking at her in bemusement. And also blushing furiously, and shooting Crowley some very actionable looks. It was the queer once-over times about a billion, and clearly wanted to eat Crowley alive. A sentiment Beth shared, frankly, but she was done being selfish.

“You’ve waited six thousand years! Get to it, already!”

Crowley just laughed.

They made several delightful discoveries that night. One, that an angel’s wings, when touched by a human, produce such a euphoric sensation it's on par with an orgasm, so jot that down. Two, that Crowley's ability to, erm, make an Effort in any gender direction was like every bisexual person's dream come true, and Beth made a point of telling them that at _length._ And three?

Miraculous orgasms were _cheating_ and they should both be ashamed of themselves, really!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so tempted to write out a rated-E fic of the three of them, especially with the wing stuff. Oh dear, this fandom has awakened something in me.
> 
> My tumblr is zinglebert-bembledack. Yes, it's an Eddie Izzard reference.


	12. Chapter 12

Sunday. The first day of the rest of their lives.

Beth was still sound asleep in that ridiculous Bauhaus bed, as the sun rose over London. Crowley and Aziraphale were seated in the kitchen, fully dressed, and nursing cups of coffee. (Black, and sweet as a stolen kiss.) And they had a slip of paper unfolded between them, as Crowley rolled and tapped his fingers on the table.

“We have to tell her,” he finally said. 

“We can’t.” That ruthless mercy was back again, which she’d told him to lay off on, but this was a bigger danger than just a simple war. It was _personal_ now. “They could pluck it right out of her head, and we’d be rumbled.”

Crowley grunted, mainly because of the use of the word ‘rumbled’ in that sentence, but didn’t argue.

“Think of it like this,” said Aziraphale, not unkindly. “She knows us so very well. If we can fool _her…_ ”

“We can fool heaven and hell.”

“Exactly.”

Beth stirred when Aziraphale came into the room, with a careful cup of coffee to lure her awake.

“Rise and shine,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She hummed happily and stretched, sitting up and rolling her neck. Aziraphale blushed a little and looked away from her tasteful nudity.

“Thank you, angel,” she murmured, sipping at the coffee. “So...I don’t have to be at work until four. We could go to St. James’? Feed the ducks and make stupid jokes.”

“Get an ice cream,” he agreed, smiling that cat in the cream smile. “And we’ll meet you at work. I’ll get us a table there tonight, we can have champagne and caviar. And you can join us.”

“I’ll be on shift, you know I can’t.” She gently thwapped his shoulder with the back of her hand. Aziraphale caught it in his own hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. 

“But...I do need to see what’s left of the shop.”

“Oh, right. I could come with you?”

Aziraphale gave her a look that was somehow still and quiet, much less effusive than his usual soft looks.

“I think that’s an extraordinarily bad idea, dear lady,” he murmured. “That was...so traumatic. I don’t want you having...issues.”

She melted, and leaned into him, careful not to spill her coffee. “If it’s gone for good, then yeah. But...if you think Adam brought it back, then, well, I'll have to get over it somehow, won’t I? I can’t avoid my home forever. Besides, my Mini’s still there. If it hasn’t been towed away.”

Aziraphale cocked his head to the side, and nodded.

“It’s still there, unmolested. Very well, come with me. But you should get to your flat at some point.”

“Right,” she drawled. “I know when I’m being kicked out. Gonna give Crowley a solo spin, angel?”

Aziraphale went bright, bright red. She did so enjoy embarrassing her angel, it was sad really.

“Maybe I am!” he said rebelliously. Beth just giggled.

“Good for you. Tell you what, let’s meet at St. James at...one? We can grab a quick lunch and that ice cream.”

“Sounds lovely.”

He moved away, and she sighed as she took another little sip of coffee. She needed to say it, badly. It had been said several times last night, but this, in the cold sober light of day, meant more.

“Aziraphale?”

The angel turned back to her, almost glowing with goodness.

“I love you.”

“I love you too. Get dressed, dear lady.”

He left. There was a brief pause, as she frowned a little.

“I can’t!” she called out of the bedroom, almost sing-song. “Crowley miracled away my clothes!”

***

Their lunch at a hot dog cart at St. James was lovely, but Crowley and Aziraphale seemed a little distracted. Beth was just too busy marveling at the little things, like a perfect wrought-iron bench overlooking the pond, the way birds sang in the sunlight, children laughing at a nearby playground.

Cliche as hell, sure. And she loved every second. She turned her face up to the sun and let her chocolate ice cream melt just a little. Licking it off your fingers was the best part, after all.

She glanced at her watch (miracled back into existence by Crowley, the same rose gold she usually wore, but with some interesting new bells and whistles; she was fairly certain that Samsung didn’t have an app that told the time in Hell, which was always, apparently, Too Late). She had to be on shift in less than an hour, and she really should start making her way over there. But she lingered. Something told her to stick around.

“You two have been awfully quiet,” she finally said, calling them out. They were muttering together, deliberately excluding her, and she was tired of it. “Plotting some great plot?”

“Not at all,” said Aziraphale. “We’re just...making sure all our ducks are in a row, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

In the pond, several ducks swam up into formation, making Beth roll her eyes. Ugh, awful pun, angel. Over yonder, a brass band played some oompah tune, which was the only grating thing about this cheerful day.

“Well, stop it. It’s Sunday. Sundays are for relaxing and eating ice cream in a park. Mondays are for ducks.”

Angel and demon exchanged a glance, and Crowley swaggered over to her, sat down next to her on the bench, and slung an arm around her shoulders. When he kissed her, he tasted like the cherry ice he’d been eating. Cherry and chocolate, great combo.

“I love you, Crowley,” she whispered as the kiss broke, and Crowley actually smiled. (She missed the significant look angel and demon shared.)

“Same, beautiful,” he whispered back, before he kissed her cheek and stood back up. “C’mon, you don’t wanna be late for your shift.”

She sighed. Started to stand up.

And looked up in alarm as several angels were gagging Aziraphale and dragging him away in broad daylight. Crowley was already up and running toward the scene, when he was hit behind the head with a crowbar. A white haired demon with coal-black eyes turned to her, and sneered at her. Beth started to scream, started to run, dropping her ice cream on her foot, when there was an icy hand grabbing her by the wrist and spinning her around. 

Gabriel.

He held her in place as the kidnappings ended, and worst of all, not a single other person in the park noticed them. Not even the hot dog seller or the oompah band. She could scream her fool head off, and nobody would notice. She was on her own against this cold, unforgiving heavenly messenger.

“Be not afraid,” Gabriel said, because that’s what one did around humanity.

“Let them go,” she said simply, calmly. Not ‘ _me_ ,’ but them.

“Aw, kiddo,” sighed Gabriel after a pause, shaking his head sadly. He looked like a parent that was about to say ‘hurts me more than it hurts you’ or something along those condescending lines. “You got in way over your head with this one.”

“Let. Them. Go.”

“They’re being put on trial. They defied heaven and hell and Her. They’ll get exactly as much mercy as they deserve.”

“Bullshit,” she said, fearless and terrified all at once. “They defied _you._ They bruised your precious little ego. This is just petty revenge and you bloody well know it!”

Gabriel’s condescending smile turned into something a little more prickly, and his purple eyes narrowed at her.

“You’re just a _human._ You can’t possibly understand these...grand and important matters…”

“You’re right, I don’t!” she interjected so fast, it actually stunned him quiet. “I don’t get the Great Plan or Ineffable Plan or whatever. But I do get this.”

She waved her free hand around the park, and Gabriel turned slightly to see. There was a moment that she tried to twist away, but he just gripped her wrist tighter. Carpals and metacarpals did a painful little grind, which she ignored to the best of her ability.

“Look around,” she whispered. “This is important.”

“What, the ducks?” he asked, dripping with sarcasm.

“Yes!” she cried back, making him blink. “Yes, the ducks. And the hot dogs. And the grass, and the wind in the trees, and the children playing, and that awful brass band. This is all part of Her creation. And She _loves_ Her creation. ...Why don’t you?”

Gabriel recoiled as if she’d kicked him in his (non-existent) goolies, and his expression twisted in dismay. She remembered the end of Jane Eyre, when Jane stood up to the man of God who was luring her to her death. That part of the book had always bothered her. St. John Rivers was her least favorite character, and now she was face to face with his angelic counterpart. So, she pulled a page out of Jane’s book, and stood her ground.

“Why are you so scornful of it? Why don’t you love it as much as She does? Why aren’t you down here every second of every day, singing Her praises?”

“I…”

“I’ll tell you why,” Beth continued viciously. “It’s because you’re a petty, sadistic bully...and I feel so sorry for you.”

That was a bridge too far, apparently, because Gabriel’s face went red, and then he snapped his fingers. The world slipped away behind a curtain of grey cotton wool, and Beth lost all control of herself. Soft and limp, like a ragdoll, blank and open, like a journal with a broken spine. Somewhere under that, she screamed in terror, screamed for her angel, for her demon, for _anybody_ to rescue her. But no rescue came.

“They’re going to be executed,” was the final verdict from Gabriel, and the only noise that left her was a pathetic whimper rather than a bloodcurdling shriek. “Hellfire and holy water. They’re not coming back to you.”

Gabriel released her wrist, and it flopped against her side. The ice cream on her shoe melted just a little more.

“What do we do with you, though? You’re not about to die, and I don’t want to fill out the paperwork if I just miracle you that way.”

If her body was capable of panic at the moment, it would have been in fight or flight mode. And she wasn’t certain, but she was pretty sure fight would win. She wanted to punch this bastard right in his smug mouth. But she couldn’t even have that satisfaction before he condemned her to oblivion.

“Ah, I know. You’re just going to forget.”

_No!_

“You’ll forget all about them. Everything that happened this last week, every encounter you’ve ever had with them, everything they’ve ever done for you...just forget about it.”

Even through the angel’s iron grip, a tear slid down her cheek, and her right hand curled into a fist, trembling at her side. But she didn’t know why, she couldn’t grasp why, she _didn’t remember why…?_

It all slipped away, like water through her fingers.

“There, that’s better, isn’t it? You can go back to your sad little flat, and your sad little job, and live your sad little life. And you won’t even know they’re gone.”

“...Who?”

“Exactly. Go on, then. Have a nice life on your stupid, saved world.”

She came back to herself slowly, blinking and breathing heavily. She felt dizzy, and she smelled a weird, toasted cinnamon taste in the back of her throat. Oh, shit, was she having a stroke? She sat down on the bench, trembling bodily for a good thirty seconds. A kindly old lady passing by approached her.

“Young lady, do you need assistance?”

Beth glanced up, vision swimming, and shook her head no. The woman moved on.

Something was missing.

Something terribly, terribly important was missing.

She felt like her heart had been carved out of her chest, and echoed hollowly. She hadn’t felt like this since Melly got sentenced, and that was a clear decade ago. She felt the long, thudding pull of a love abruptly lost, torn away from her in a moment through no fault of her own. So why was she hurting like this? Definitely not over Melly…

She glanced at her watch.

“ _Shit!_ I’m late for work!”

Look at Beth, running in high heels across St. James’ Park, cutting corners to make it to the Ritz on time. Sure, it wasn’t as flashy as getting there in a Bentley but...wait, she’d never been in a Bentley before. Had she?

***

Beth was having a _rotten_ afternoon.

She stared at her time card, seeing three… _three_ sick days banked. Since she only got four every six months, that was incredibly troubling. She could count on the fingers of one thumb the times she’d called out sick, the last four years prior. Sure, it had happened, but so very rarely and only when she was well and truly sick. Skiving off work was just not an option. Her dad had pounded that into her skull when she was barely out of diapers.

(Part of her was honestly a little glad he’d been long gone when the Brexit vote happened. She would have hated to argue with her own father over that stupidity.)

Thing was? She didn’t remember taking those days.

She didn’t recall most of the last week. Class. Work. Sure. But there were huge swathes of lost time that made her worry she was actually going to crack for real.

Her manager was cruising through the breakroom, seeing her staring at her time card, and paused for a second.

“Beth? You alright?” 

“...Charlie? Erm. I think... These sick days.”

“Three of them, yes.”

“Yeah. Did...I tell you why?”

Charles Bailey, general manager of the Ritz and well used to Beth’s vagaries and quirks, gave her a narrow-eyed look, and shook his head.

“Not at all.”

“...Great.”

“You okay?”

She looked up at him, and remembered their affair. A six week thing, with lots of wild sex and quiet companionship, which he broke off when he offered her a job. There had been a cold cost-loss analysis on her part, and took the job instead of the relationship. There had been several days in her past where she’d regretted that analysis. Charlie was one of the good ones.

“I don’t know,” she said, honesty cracking out of her. There was something wrong with her, that was without a doubt, but she had no idea what the hell was going on. “I just...you ever feel like you’re missing something dreadfully important, and can’t recall what?”

“Sometimes.” Charlie put his hand on her shoulder, gently and carefully, mindful of the context. “Listen, if you’re still not feeling well…”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “I just...Chuck, I think I’m losing it.”

“Present tense, or…?”

“Fuck off!” she said with a half-broken laugh. 

“Beth.” Charlie took her by the hands and looked dead into her eyes. “Whatever’s going on with you. Whatever you need. I’ll make sure you get it. If you need to duck out again tonight, that’s fine, I’ll pick up the slack. I just want you to be okay.”

She melted a little, as she always did around him, and gripped his hands back hard. “You’re far kinder to me than I merit,” she whispered, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

“Bullshit,” he whispered back. “You deserve all the kindness I can muster, luv.”

“Don’t say that. You make me want to resign so I can be with you again, you git.”

“Sorry, I’m married to the sea. It was a bitch getting the sea into a gown, too.”

They both started giggling madly, and clung to each other for a long moment, her face in his shoulder. (She was careful not to get makeup on his impeccable jacket.) At least he understood their reality. At least he understood the boundaries. At least they’d both had their moment, and let the moment go.

(Let the moment go, don’t forget it for a moment though. Just remembering you’ve had an _and_ when you’re back to _or_...makes the _or_ seem more than it did before... Why was Into The Woods suddenly running through her head? She hadn’t thought about that musical for years.)

She went about her job with the usual perfect mindlessness that was required, and got her hustle on with all her tables, pocketed some truly amazing tips, and smiled, knowing her rent and tuition was paid.

At precisely 6:42 PM, Charlie pulled her aside with a grin.

“Your favorites are here.”

Beth blinked, and felt that carved-out hollow feeling behind her ribs, but had no context for it.

“My...what?”

“Crowley and Fell. They’re at table 24. They’re positively giddy with something. Asked for you by name, as always.”

Beth stood there for a long moment, her mangled memory stinking like week-old fish as she tried to remember those names. There was something, something on the edges of her mind, but when she tried to grasp it, it slipped away like smoke.

“Sure,” she said absently, as Charlie frowned. She took her pad out of her skirt, and her pen out of her bun, and made her way over to table 24.

There was a soft, round, blond man, carefully perusing the menu. There was a sharp, angular redhead, carefully perusing the blond. There was something about them that set her brain spinning and her heart thumping and her body trembling, sure. But she’d never seen them before, after Charlie had proclaimed them her favorites. So, she put on her best customer service posture and her best customer service smile and approached them.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said in her poshest tone. “Welcome to the Ritz. My name is Beth, I’ll be your waitress this evening. May I direct your attention to our six seasonal courses, designed by our Chef John Williams.”

Both men chuckled and rolled their eyes.

“ _Okay_ , Beth,” said the redhead. “We saved the world, you don’t have to get all formal anymore.”

She went very still, and tried to breathe. It was oddly difficult, all of the sudden.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, ingratiating and quiet, gaze unable to stay on these two men. “I don’t...erm. The menu with classic wine selection is also a very popular option, we have an excellent Chateau Margaux…”

The redhead reached forward and snagged her hand in his, gripping her tight, and inescapable. She knew she should call Charlie over to save her, but she froze, terrified and trembling.

“This isn’t funny, Beth,” he said, and she wanted to flee. But, she also wanted to stay. She had no idea what was going on in her broken brain.

“You have the advantage of me, sir,” she managed, trying to extract herself from this awful situation.

Both men stared at her for a long, long time. And then the redhead frowned.

“What’s my name?” he demanded out of the blue. Beth stared at him, and then she shook her head in denial.

“I...I don’t know, sir,” she answered. “I just...I’m sorry...are you…?”

She couldn’t quite make eye contact with him any more, even behind those dark sunglasses. The blond looked like he was about to burst into tears, and she had no idea how to deal with any of this. In all her years serving rich people food, she’d never encountered this sort of thing. One man presuming his privilege to her time, privacy, and body? Par for the course. Two men doing the same? Kinky.

“...Give us a moment, dear lady,” said the blond, his voice wobbling. “We still need time to decide.”

“I’ll give you all the time you need, gentlemen,” she cooed, as the redhead dropped her hand, and she beat a hasty retreat into her breakroom, whereupon she broke down into an inexplicable shaking fit.

***

“Crowley…”

“Aziraphale…”

“I think I’ve quite lost my appetite.”

“Same. Pay for the champagne. Let’s go.”

***

An angel and a demon sat in a restored SoHo bookshop, both utterly miserable, both utterly free, neither knowing what to do next.

“How?” moaned Aziraphale. “How the _hell_ didn’t we see this coming?”

“I don’t know,” said Crowley, slumped across Aziraphale’s desk. “No prophecy about it, I guess. Anathema didn’t say anything either.” 

(Here was the thing; Agnes Nutter was a bloody-minded old bitch, but even she wasn’t so uncaring as to send Beth to this fate without warning. The problem was, generations of Nutters and Devices had missed it. It was oblique, even for Agnes: 𝔒𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔡 𝔧𝔢𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔲𝔰𝔶 𝔴𝔦𝔭𝔢𝔰 𝔠𝔩𝔢𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔢. There were a few puzzled annotations around it, but nobody had really ever figured it out, Anathema and Aziraphale included. The main problem with being unhinged from Time was that by being too obvious with her prophecies, Agnes could cause things to not happen, or happen out of order. And if that happened, her visions would recenter and refocus and that could take _weeks_ and the recursive loops just gave her a migraine. So...oblique it was.)

“It’s my fault." Aziraphale had an expression on his face that was approximately thirty seconds away from reintroducing the concept of 'smiting' into the world. "I was so caught up in saving you.”

“Don’t...don’t blame yourself. I didn’t catch it either.”

“This has Gabriel’s fingerprints all over,” Aziraphale said, his voice flat and empty. “Oh, _Crowley._ She must have been so frightened. And now she doesn’t even…”

Crowley just chugged the rest of his wine, his expression a ruin. So much for love, so much for believing in that. They’d both taken and taken and taken from her, and then when it counted most, they’d abandoned her. If he wasn’t already a demon, this definitely would have sent his soul to hell forever.

“There must be some way to get her memories back! We could...we could try to miracle them back…?”

“Angel,” said Crowley, not daring to look up. “Don’t. You know how that works. It’s like taping over an old VHS cassette. Once her memories are erased, they’re gone. It’s over, Aziraphale.”

It wasn’t until the angel started crying that Crowley broke too.

An hour later, Crowley made a Skype call.

***

Anathema closed out of Skype, her hand over her mouth. She was horrified, but she had a plan already cooking in her bright little head. That was just how she dealt with everything horrible. Call it a holdover from The Book.

“Newt?”

He poked his head around the corner, wiping a dish with a towel. He was cute when he was all domestic. They’d been trying to figure out where they were going, after burning the second book, but now Anathema knew.

“You said you lived in Clapham with your mom, right?”

“Right.”

“...Would you be interested in moving back there for a bit? We have a project. It’s Beth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody:  
> Not a single soul:  
> Seriously nobody:
> 
> Me: But what if we did some angst?
> 
> ("Taako, what if she's just gone?" "...Who?")


	13. Chapter 13

**Two years later.**

Beth’s phone was trilling a gentle alarm that slowly ratcheted up, a catchy jingle that came with the device. She reached over with one arm and turned it off, before rolling back over and nuzzling into Anathema. She hummed with satisfaction and opened her beautiful dark eyes.

Newt, on Anathema’s other side, was grunting in annoyance at being woken up. Beth chuckled softly to herself.

“Good morning,” she whispered to Anathema, who grinned hugely.

“Good morning. Today’s the day.”

Beth got a huge grin herself, and rolled onto her back, stretching out. All these years, and she was finally getting her degree. She could finally quit her job at the Ritz and find something even better, better paying, more satisfying. More fulfilling. She’d been promising Newt and Anathema a better lot than their studio flat for ages now. She could finally deliver on it.

It had been the strangest coincidence, meeting them. She’d been on her way to work, just about to back out of her parking spot, when Newt’s ridiculous Reliant Robin had broken down in the worst possible place, blocking her in. What had started as a screaming row with him turned into a stunned silence as Anathema stepped out of the car. That single moment had brought her into the most amazing relationship of her entire life. She’d fallen hard for both of them after very little time at all, and after just a few months, they’d figured it would make the most sense if they lived together, combined their expenses. (Newt was perpetually unemployed, and Anathema was a trust fund baby from California who only got so much a month. So. Beth trusted, perhaps a little foolishly, and took the plunge.)

“I’ll go make coffee,” grumbled Newt, crawling over both of them, causing both women to giggle. He stole kisses from both of them, and then strolled bare-arsed over to the kitchen.

“As soon as I find a job,” Beth whispered in a promise. “The second I find something better. We’ll get a better flat. We might even get a house.”

“You don’t owe me or Newt anything,” Anathema whispered back. “I’m happy here. He’s happy here. You’re happy here. We could be living in a tent in a field, and I’d be happy. I love you, Beth.”

Beth’s heart did a cute little rhumba, and she stole a kiss. God, she was so lucky to have this love in her life, the love of two remarkable, good people. Really good people. Newt was humming slightly off key in the tiny kitchen, and she grinned fondly at his back before turning back to Anathema.

“I know,” she said, stroking at Anathema’s gorgeous hair. “I love you too. It’s just...I have this vision in my head. You and me and Newt, and a nice little cottage somewhere.”

Anathema’s eyes went sharp and focused. She did that sometimes, got this really intense look on her face whenever Beth said something odd. Or made any reference to her spotty memory, or her ex, or her late teenage years in foster care, or...well, it wasn’t often. Anathema was very up front from the get go that she was an occultist, and had declared Beth’s aura fascinating. (Beth wasn’t sure about all that nonsense, to be honest, but indulged her lover out of sheer affection.)

“Tell me about the cottage,” declared Anathema, sitting up in bed. Beth took that as an opportunity to flop over onto her lap and nuzzle into her bare belly.

“Just a cottage, nothing special,” she replied, her voice muffled a little. “There’s a quaint little kitchen. And a cozy nook for reading. And a garden outside. There’s...there’s a bench in the middle. And an arched gate to the road. And jasmine...jasmine hanging over the windows…”

Anathema barely dared to breathe as Newt handed her the coffee. Beth was drifting a little, lost in this hazy vision, caught for some reason on the jasmine. And then she abruptly sat up and took her coffee too, giving Newt a grateful kiss.

“Silly, I know,” she said. “I mean, who has fantasies about cottages, am I right? I could never leave London.”

“Right,” said Anathema, but her tone was weak and quiet. She and Newt exchanged a glance.

“We don’t have to move there,” said Newt reasonably. “We could just rent it for a holiday if you want.”

“Oooh!” cooed Beth, leaning over and nibbling at his shoulder. “Hark at you, let’s take a fancy holiday at Jasmine Cottage in Tadf-.....”

All three of them went very still at that, as Beth tried to figure out why she’d said it like that, what that place name was that couldn’t leave her mouth. It felt like a thing from the yawning chasm that was her mind, something lost and forbidden and frightening. She’d never come to terms with that, that blank blind spot in her memories. She’d even gone to hospital for it, and therapy. Nobody could find anything wrong with her, at least not physically. So she just tried to ignore it as best she could, it was the only way she could stay sane.

“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” she said weakly, abandoning her coffee and fleeing.

It took several minutes of standing under the hot spray for the shaking to stop.

When she turned off the water, she could hear Newt and Anathema having a low, hurried conversation. They were obviously talking about her, and her swiss-cheese brain. She didn’t blame them one bit, honestly. If she were in a relationship with a weirdo like her, she’d be having low, hurried, worried conversations too.

Wiping one hand through the condensation on the mirror, she stared at her watery reflection, green eyes trying to see the truth.

“Jasmine Cottage,” she whispered to herself, just to see if it sparked that terror again. It did not. Nothing, not even triggering the vague picture in her mind she had in her fantasy. It was as if...no, that wasn’t right, she…

“Jasm...Jas-...cottage. There’s a cottage. Right?”

The whole thing was receding into nothingness. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

By the time she finished and brushed her teeth, she was dangerously close to forgetting the entire concept of cottages as an extant thing, so she quickly shoved it all away, and started reciting nonsense nursery rhymes in her head to drown out the static.

When she opened the bathroom door, both Newt and Anathema went quiet, and Anathema even closed her Chromebook. They were both dressed, too. So...talking to somebody on Skype. Grand.

“What should I wear today?” Beth asked, forcing a smile and turning to their closet. “It’s not every day I get my degree!”

“The dark blue blouse,” said Newt, forcing his own smile. “I like that one on you.”

“Can do!”

***

She had on her gown and mortarboard cap as she took the stage. Sure, she was a clear decade older than the rest of the graduates, but she didn’t care. It had taken her so much work, so much time to get here, and she deserved the small thrill of pride that welled up inside of her. Beth managed to catch Anathema’s eye as she took the stage, and beamed at her.

Next to Anathema and Newt, unseen by Beth by divine providence, sat Crowley and Aziraphale.

“Look at her,” sighed Aziraphale, dabbing at the corners of his eyes with a fancy handkerchief. “Oh, I’m so proud of her.”

“She’s okay?” asked Crowley.

Anathema sighed. “I told you about this morning. She’s...there was a slight chance that things are leaking out. She gets so worked up if she tries to dig into those lost memories. It’s hard to watch.”

“What happened?” 

“She half-remembered Jasmine Cottage,” said Newt, frowning unhappily. “Started to say Tadfield, and then just...froze.”

Aziraphale winced, but then set his jaw.

“We’ll discuss this later. Let’s just celebrate her accomplishment, shall we?”

“...Yeah.”

The ceremony was lovely, if a little long and boring, and then Beth was shaking her Dean’s hand and tossing her mortarboard in the air with the rest of her graduating class. It was a happy chaos after that, as she ran to Newt and Anathema and pulled them both into a big hug.

Therein followed a lot of mingling, a lot of introductions, drifting away and towards and away again from her lovers. She’d had half a mind to propose to the both of them today, but there was a small, niggling voice in the back of her head that told her not to. Tomorrow. In privacy. She’d ask them tomorrow. She wanted nothing more than to marry her sweet witch and her sweet little amphibian. (Newt verbally protested when she called him that. Newt actually secretly adored that she called him that.)

“We should celebrate.”

That was from Anathema, who was grinning at her. Beth nodded, her diploma tucked under her arm.

“Say the word, we’ll go.”

“There’s this amazing little Indian restaurant in SoHo that you’d just die over,” said Anathema, deciding on her own to force the issue. Aziraphale might have objected, but there was clearly something left there, and maybe exposure to the bookshop would trigger that final cascade. “We can have dinner and go shopping.”

“That sounds amazing,” Beth agreed, already pulling open the hooks that kept her gown closed. “Order us some butter chicken.”

“You can have the butter chicken,” said Anathema with a grimace. “I’ll stick to the vegan options.”

“Of course, love,” Beth whispered back, pressing a gentle kiss to Anathema’s neck. They’d argued a couple of times about sticking to a strict vegan diet, but in the end, Beth and Newt had both said a hard nope, and Anathema had compromised. That was the nice thing about a troika. They could all find their compromise points, and all communicate their needs, and all support each other.

Being a poly bisexual was _so_ cool.

***

Their fancy dinner done, Beth and Newt and Anathema wandered up and down SoHo for a bit, taking in all the fun little shops and nooks. (Newt had gone quite a funny shade of pink when they passed The Pleasure Chest, and Beth needled him mercilessly about it for a bit.)

Then they turned a corner, and Beth felt like somebody had just dropped a bowling ball on her head. She stopped dead right in the middle of the sidewalk, which Newt and Anathema both missed for a second, and walked on without her.

“Oh.”

Moving as if hypnotized, Beth started crossing the street, cattycorner across traffic. The blaring of a loud horn only barely snapped her out of it, and even then, she kept moving. Newt and Anathema jogged to catch up, Anathema’s skirts swirling.

“You okay?”

Beth didn’t answer, but stopped dead in front of the door of a strange old bookshop, staring up at the hand-lettered sign. Newt and Anathema exchanged a glance, half hopeful, half nervous.

“That’s the wrong color,” she said faintly, like she was talking in her sleep. “It’s too bright. Used to be darker. It’s the wrong _color._ ”

As if in a dream, she reached up and put her thumb on the latch.

It gave, and the door opened. (Aziraphale had miracled it so that no matter what, if Beth ever did come back, no matter the time of day or night, whether he was in or not, she would be able to get in. Hope springs eternal.)

There was a gentle bell that rang above the door, and she stepped into her dreams. She was only peripherally aware of Newt and Anathema following her, and the door closing behind them. Turning in a slow half-circle, she took in the shop, barely daring to breathe.

“That’s not right.”

Three steps forward, and two to the left, had her face to face with a display that was shockingly wrong. The entire Just William series by Richmal Crompton sat gleaming in perfect first edition glory. But the bibles, they were gone.

“Bugger...bugger,” she whispered to herself, trying to remember how the rest of it went. And then she turned again, her steps getting faster, as she marched to the fiction section. That, reassuringly, was in the right spot, but there was a gap on the shelves where the Brontë sisters were supposed to be. A book was missing. She had that book. She-....didn’t she have that book?

“Beth?” came Anathema’s timid voice, trailing behind her. Beth ignored it. She was standing in a spot just below the stairs, staring at the floor. And then she bent down and moved her arms in a sweeping circle, as if tracing out a shape that had once been on the floor. Standing once more, she looked toward the kitchenette.

“Cabinets all wrong,” she said flatly. “They’re on the wrong side. And they’re too white. They used to be ecru. They’re too _white._ ”

Any hope that Anathema and Newt had been harboring was starting to die, because yes, she remembered, but this was horrifying to witness. It wasn’t a woman rediscovering her treasured past, it was rather like waking from a nightmare only to discover it was real. Beth turned again toward the back room.

Her chair wasn’t there. _Her chair wasn’t there?_

“Where’s my…? Where’s…?”

Anxiety and panic were now painted clearly on her face, like a spooked animal about to bolt. Newt, being a man of self-preservation, stepped aside and opened the door again.

Aziraphale stood on the threshold, holding a box of pastries and looking absolutely stunned. And then he looked at Anathema.

“What have you done?” he said, his tone grieving and slightly panicked himself.

Beth saw Aziraphale, and snapped. She ran out of the shop like it was on fire again (again?), nearly knocking the box of pastries out of the angel’s grip. She ran blindly, in terrified tears, as the hole in her memories threatened to engulf her entirely. She could feel it nibbling away at her very self as she darted through SoHo, leaving chaos in her wake. Car horns, loud shouts, extended middle fingers, they all followed and mocked her as she ran for her life. She ended up on a bus bench about a mile from the shop, grey crowding in on the edges of her vision, as she desperately scrambled to keep a hold of her memories. They were flooding out of her faster now. Anathema and Newt went first, and then her memories of the Ritz, and then her car, bye Melly, so long foster parents, adios mum and dad.

All she had left was her name, which she was frantically repeating to herself. “Beth, I’m Beth, my name is Beth, I’m B-...I’m…”

“Young lady? Do you need help?”

It was from a grizzled old homeless man, who’d been sleeping on the bench next to her. He’d heard her muttering, and was reaching out to her. A man in no position to help. The thought seemed almost comical, in a way. She almost shook her head no, but then…

“Yes! I need help. _Please_ help me!”

The old man smiled, and his eyes drooped. “Ah. There it is.”

SoHo fell away, between one breath and the next. Beth found herself standing in a lovely space that was part garden, part corporate office, part blinding white light. A woman sat on a squishy white bean bag chair, Her russet hair coiling and twining everywhere. She looked a little like Alanis Morissette, and sounded a bit like Frances McDormand. (And also George Burns and Morgan Freeman, which was weird.) (And also Beyonce, which wasn’t.)

“Hello, dear heart,” She said, smiling and patting a part of the bean bag chair, which was now just large enough for two. Beth made her way over without taking so much as a single step, and sat down.

“Hi. Um. Who are you?”

“I Am,” was the only answer, accompanied by another one of those gentle smiles. 

“Oh.” Beth was in way over her head now, but she wasn’t frightened anymore. Fear wasn’t possible in this place, anyway. “Am I...am I dead?”

“No, no, not at all. Not for a good long while yet. I just wanted to meet you. I asked if you needed help before, but you said no.”

At the park. The day it all went wrong. It was there somewhere, lost behind a curtain of grey wool, but somehow she knew. The kindly old lady who’d asked her…

“Oh. That was You.”

“That was Me.”

“Why didn’t You help me anyway?”

“Well, that’s the thing about free will. I can’t force it. Otherwise you stop being human. I have to wait until I’m asked.”

It made a weird kind of logical sense, in a way. But it was the kind of logic that tended to run in circles, and Beth knew for a fact that she’d never be able to follow it without losing the thread. 

“Do you like playing cards?” That question came out of nowhere, and Beth actually giggled a little at that.

“No, not really. I suck at poker.”

She laughed in return, and gave Beth a gentle caress with the flat of Her hand, cupping her cheek. Beth was surprised to discover that she had started crying at some point. It wasn’t sorrow, though, or even joy, it was just her poor human body reacting even as her poor human brain tried to process all of this.

“So. You’re the one who fell in love with My Aziraphale and My Crowley. Such a rare one. Usually it’s worship, or commands, or just plain old lust. I did make them awfully pretty, didn’t I?”

Beth could only nod, gulping down another little giggle.

“But you...you knew exactly what they were, and fell in love with them anyway. And they love you back so fiercely. It’s nice to see My creations loving so much.”

And then that blankness was back again, as those two names swirled and vanished from her memory. Beth stared at Her and her lower lip started wobbling.

“I…”

“I know,” She said, softly, sadly. “It’s all right. That’s why you’re here. You know, it’s funny, Aziraphale said you had a mind like a safe, once.”

“Doesn’t sound like me. My memories are gone.”

“They’re not,” She murmured. “That’s the thing about safes. Sure, they keep things out...but.”

She leaned forward and pressed a small kiss to Beth’s forehead. It was like a sunrise going off behind her eyes. Fireworks at sunrise, an upward current of warm air, feathers catching in her hair as she flew.

“Safes also keep precious things carefully protected.”

And then it all came back.

All of it. Every second. It shocked her into stillness, and she closed her eyes, all the better to cherish every golden moment. Then she blinked back into awareness. Beth was still sitting on that bus bench in SoHo, hands grasping her head. And everything she’d lost came rushing back in full technicolor, accompanied by triumphant harmonies. She nearly fainted with the power of it all, the sheer relief she felt. She was herself again.

Beth glanced to her right. God was sitting on that SoHo bench with her, bouncing Her knees together and gazing all around.

“Nice. Haven’t been down in a while. I should do it more often.”

There was a long moment where Beth didn’t know what to do. Should she kneel, or curtsey or something? She gulped, almost rising to her feet, but God turned to her and smiled again, held up one finger, gesturing for her to wait.

“Oh, before you go running off, there’s somebody who wants to speak with you.”

She waved down the road, and before Beth could ask any other questions, or even say thank you, She was gone. All that lingered was the sense of a soft, knowing, slightly smug smile. Ineffable indeed.

Beth stood up off the bench as she heard the subtle click click click of expensive dress shoes on the sidewalk. The Archangel Gabriel rounded the corner and approached. Her heart slammed into her throat and she nearly screamed, but he stopped moving. Just stood there for a moment, his hands raised in a gentling manner.

“Be not afraid. Seriously, this time.”

“Stay away from me.” She was already starting to back away, flight instinct screaming at her. But then she saw the look on the archangel’s face, and she blinked.

Gabriel looked...sad. Deeply, desperately sad, like he was on the verge of tears.

“I’m staying right here,” he promised her, making no move to close the distance between them. “I just wanted to let you know...you were _right._ And I am so sorry.”

Beth wondered if she was the only person in the history of this beautiful, stupid planet that had ever gotten a sincere apology from an archangel.

“After what you said to me, I was...angry. Which wasn’t very angelic of me, I confess. So, I wanted to prove you wrong. I wanted to prove to myself that I did love Her creation, just to spite you. I ate cheesecake, and fed the ducks.”

She couldn’t help it, a strange little half grin curled her mouth up. And a weird half-gasp, half-laugh left her throat.

“I hope you didn’t feed them bread,” she said weakly. “S’not good for them.”

“No, I fed them those little green spheres.” He held up his forefinger curled against his thumb, indicating something the size of…

“Peas?”

“Peas!” he echoed triumphantly. “Yes, exactly. Oh. Visualize Whirled Peas. I get that now!” His granite face broke into a heavenly grin, and his violet eyes crinkled with amusement. This was insane. This was an insane conversation, and Beth broke down into slightly hysterical giggles. Gabriel just kept grinning, proud of himself now.

“I fed the ducks peas, and I had cheesecake and coffee, and I went swimming in the ocean which, by the way? Really cold.”

“Yeah, it does that.” 

“And I kept thinking about it. And kept thinking about it, and kept coming to the conclusion that you were right. I didn’t really love Her creation, not until I was...partaking of it. It was the cheesecake that did it, honestly. I think sushi is next.”

“Gabriel…”

He took one cautious step forward, and she didn’t bolt.

“Did She tell you to…?” Beth pointed up, and Gabriel shook his head.

“No. This was all on me. I was already coming to fix this whole mess when She intervened. Which...kiddo, I hope you realize just how much that _matters._ ”

“Please don’t call me that.” Her tone wasn’t cold, and it wasn’t rude, but it was firm and unyielding. A look of surprise passed over his expression, and then he looked sad again. But he nodded before giving her a tight, repentant smile.

“Right. I’m sorry for that, too. So. I don’t expect forgiveness. You owe me nothing. I just wanted to tell you that you were right, and I was sorry.”

And then he put out his hand to shake.

She stared at it for a long, long time, not sure if she trusted him. But then, she took the plunge, and had a little faith. She put her hand in his, and they shook on it. And Gabriel, well, he was grinning again, big and cheerful and still a touch bombastic. Leopards can’t change their spots, after all. But angels...well, they _could_ learn.

Gabriel leaned into her, and whispered something in her ear that she didn’t understand. It was almost like Latin, but somehow older and even more beautiful.

“What was that?” she asked, their hands still clasped.

“The meaning of your name.”

And with that odd pronouncement, he let her go and turned away, his snazzy shoes clicking away into SoHo. She stood there for a bit, and then her eyes lit up.

She was running for the bookshop as fast as she could not a second later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Davenport I'm Davenport I'm Davenport I'm Davenport etc.
> 
> There's a tumblr headcanon that Gabriel cannot be redeemed unless he is Kronk, which I fucking ran with. So read his lines in this chapter appropriately.
> 
> One chapter and one epilogue away from the end. I couldn't wait a week anymore.


	14. Chapter 14

Aziraphale, Principality of London, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden and keeper of Her holy flaming sword, was slouched miserably over his desk. He wanted nothing more than to chase Beth out into the SoHo night, but just the sight of him had triggered...whatever the hell that was, that prompted her to run screaming out the door. Anathema and Newt had it well in hand, anyway, both of them babbling something about ‘apps’ and ‘GPS’ and other human nonsense as they ran off too.

He stared down at his box of pastries, and in a fit of most unangelic anger, threw it against the far wall with a guttural shout.

So when the bell above the door rang, he was ready to do some serious smiting. He was in just the right mood.

“We are _CLOSED!_ ” he snarled wetly, not caring what he sounded like, not even turning around. Whatever hapless idiot had just walked through his door was about to be a faintly glittering smear on the cosmos if they didn’t vacate.

“...Aziraphale?”

The angel looked up through teary lashes, and there she was. Looking like eighteen different kinds of hell warmed over, copper hair mussed and eyes bloodshot from her own crying jag. She’d snapped off a heel on her shoe, in her mad dash, so was carrying her shoes in her hand, and the hose on her legs were more runs than hose.

She was in the top three of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

“Beth?”

And with that, she was in his arms, shoes thrown aside with a careless clump, and he was clinging back just as tightly.

“It’s...you remember?”

“Yeah. Thanks to an old friend of yours.”

It took a moment for her meaning to hit, and then his eyes went as wide as platters. He pulled back, staring at her in pure astonishment, and Beth just giggled.

“So much for me not being religious, eh?”

Aziraphale didn’t answer directly. He let the searing, scorching kiss he planted on her do the talking. She melted into it with a loud groan, and then her hands were in his hair, tugging him closer still. He went where she directed him, all too glad to. And when their hands started wandering elsewhere, well, could you blame them? Two years they’d been apart, after all. A breath, a heartbeat for an angel, surely, but to Beth it was 730 days too long. Even if she hadn’t remembered them all that well. Or at all.

When the bell above the door rang again, Aziraphale looked up sheepishly, expecting Newt and Anathema, but instead…

“Crowley!”

And then she was flying into his arms and giving him just as deep and searing a kiss as she’d been getting from Aziraphale, which Crowley returned with interest.

“You grew your hair out,” she said after the kiss broke, running her fingers through fire-red waves. The demon smirked back at her.

“And you cut yours. I like it, a bob looks good on you. Anathema and Newt are looking for you,” he said, his tone understanding and affectionate. “Do you want me to call them?”

“Oh! Oh shit!” She started patting down her pockets, and got a panicked look on her face. “My phone’s gone! Oh, holy hell, I…”

Crowley pulled her (slightly battered but still intact) Samsung out of his pocket and held it up for her. Aziraphale couldn’t help the little chuckle that left him. Beth gratefully grabbed it, and then even as she was dialling, paused and glanced up at her demon.

“How...do you have this?”

“I said I had more than just a tracker on your car. It fell out of your pocket about a block away. You think I didn’t feel that when you ran out of here? That...that panic and fear? I’m a demon, I could sense that from you on the other side of the world.”

“Crowley…”

Even Aziraphale looked a little sad at that, and the angel crossed the room to take his hand and give his demon a little kiss. Crowley rolled his eyes and looked annoyed.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all incredibly angsty, you wanna call your girlfriend or what, Beth?”

“...Right.”

So about five minutes later, a breathless Anathema burst into the shop, followed by an even more breathless and red in the face Newt. Poor lad, he wasn’t used to running so much. And then Beth was in _their_ arms as angel and demon leaned into each other with a smile.

“Beth, I’m sorry,” gulped Anathema after a moment. “I thought...I thought it would help. If I’d known, I never would have even thought about…”

“Shh,” she soothed, pressing kiss after kiss to Anathema’s face. “Hey. Anathema. You...you took care of me for two years. You found me after everything, and set up the gentlest way you could get back in my life. You came for me.”

“Phrasing…” muttered Crowley, which got a puzzled look from Newt and Aziraphale, and a twin glare from Beth and Anathema. And then Beth giggled a bit, shaking her head.

“And that, too,” she snarked at Crowley, who just smirked at her. “It’s okay, Anathema. I love you.”

The witch was so relieved she pulled Beth back into another long, hot kiss, nearly sobbing with the things she was feeling. It wasn’t until Newt cleared his throat that they broke apart.

“Don’t I get any credit?” he asked with a little self-deprecating grin. “I mean, I had to be the sensible one for two years. You know how hard that was for me? Being the sensible one in the middle of you two?”

Beth walked up to Newt, took his face in her hands, and kissed him just as passionately as she had the rest of them. Newt’s ears went bright red.

“Sorry, Newt, I hate to break it to you, but you’ll always be the sensible one.”

“Damn. And here I was hoping for an international man of mystery vibe.”

“You _are_ dating two very beautiful women,” pointed out Aziraphale, which made Anathema blush. Beth thought that was adorable. The witch, blushing because an angel complimented her. Heh. Newt looked thoughtful at that, and then smiled like a goon.

“I am, aren’t I?”

Crowley rolled his eyes.

“Okay,” breathed Anathema after a moment, collecting herself and smoothing down her skirt. “Okay. You really remember everything?”

“Every second,” Beth promised, even as Newt tried to smooth her hair down.

“...Cool. Alright. C’mon, Newt. Let’s go home and get packing.”

Beth’s heart sank.

“Wait, what?”

“Packing up our apartment,” she said, as if it wasn’t the most obvious thing. “Our house is waiting.”

And that’s when Beth really _did_ remember everything, including the fact that Anathema was filthy stinking rich and had been keeping that a secret to keep up appearances.

“Our… _house?_ ”

“Yeah. In Tadfield. I bought Jasmine Cottage ages ago. And it turns out that Oxford University is just so looking for a speech and vocal therapist for their communications department. If you want the job, that is.”

Beth was experiencing severe emotional whiplash, as her life had suddenly gone from broke waitress to wealthy, fulfilled therapist in the blink of an eye. Aziraphale noticed, and gently shook his head at Anathema.

“One thing at a time, my dear. Let her get her feet under her before you go sweeping her off them.”

“I was actually hoping you’d do that,” returned Anathema, giving Aziraphale a wink. And so saying, she took Newt’s hand and started to leave.

“Wait! Anathema…”

Anathema turned, and gave Beth an ineffable smile of her own.

“You deserve it. Have fun. I’ll see you in the morning. Or morning after. Take your time.”

And with a bright laugh, they left.

“...Don’t let Newt drive the Mini!” she called after them as the door swung shut. Crowley snickered to himself, and then put his sunglasses back on.

“Well, then,” he chuckled, leaning in to kiss Aziraphale good night. “That’s all folks. Call me when you’re done, eh?”

“You’re not...staying?” asked Aziraphale, voicing Beth’s question too. She glanced between the two of them, and then shook her head.

“Crowley, don’t go. Please. I’ll go home with Newt and Anathema, it’s fine, I don’t ever want to come between you two again…”

“Shut up,” Crowley said firmly. “You never have and you never will. If it weren’t for you, Aziraphale and I might have never dared anything. _You_ , Beth, you gave us what we needed to finally see that we really were on our own side.”

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale, and smiled so softly it made his face millennia younger.

“I’ve loved him since Eden, and was so afraid of making him Fall, I couldn’t act. He’s loved me since…”

“Since the same,” whispered Aziraphale, and Crowley nodded, relieved.

“And he worried about drawing heavenly attention onto me. For six thousand years we danced around each other, drawn together but afraid. But then there was you, and the apocalypse. You, you clever human, you beautiful thing, loving us both the same. And giving us the fuel to stop the end of the world. We love you, Beth. And...well, you and I have had our fun. _He_ and I have had our fun. But somehow, you two haven’t had much time alone.”

Beth just stood there, breathless. Crowley gave her a two-finger salute, snapped his sunglasses on, and strolled out the open door.

“Give her hell for me, angel.”

The bell dinged with a sort of exciting finality.

Angel and human turned to each other, and for the first time, Beth didn’t know what to say to him.

“So,” she started weakly. “Should we play parcheesi? Read poetry? Sample cheeses?”

“You told me once,” said the angel, walking toward her slowly, “not to tease you. So don’t tease me.”

“You really want to be sexual with me?” she managed, and Aziraphale smiled that cat in the cream smile.

“I’m going to climb you like a leaf.”

“...Tree.”

“...Right. Climb you like a tree.”

“That’s really only supposed to be said by... _oh!_ ”

The gasp left her as Aziraphale scooped her up into a surprisingly firm bridal carry, and took her up to his bedroom, taking two steps at a time. She melted into it, her head buried in the sweet spot between his shoulder and neck, and pressed several actionable kisses there. If you told anybody that Aziraphale groaned wantonly, he’d kill you.

Beth ended up flat on her back on that featherbed, as Aziraphale started peeling off his (miraculously restored) jacket and vest. And then he paused, and turned to her.

“I never thought…” he started, and then closed his eyes. His coat ended up draped over his vanity chair, along with his vest and bow tie. “I never thought I’d ever get to love you again.”

“Aziraphale…”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, plain and simple. “I never should have left you alone. I hope you can forgive me.”

“...Make love to me,” she said, just as plain and simple. “Please.”

There was a certain expression on Aziraphale’s face as he took that in, and then he just snapped his fingers. He was done waiting for such human, mundane things as undressing a lover. He needed it now. She squirmed happily, started to slide under the blankets, but the angel pounced on her instead. The noise that left her was something between utterly aroused, and utterly shocked.

Behind that soft, round facade, the angel was hiding some serious muscle. 

He kissed up her body like he was taking in a great feast, and she could only lay there and take it. He had her pinned so thoroughly, and yet she’d never felt safer in her life. Their fingers twined together as he finally reached her mouth, and claimed it in another searing kiss. 

“Oh, my dearest,” he whispered, lips barely touching hers. She could feel him pressing hard against her hip, and she moaned softly. The one night they’d been together like this, two years ago, they’d both been focused on Crowley, honestly. (Aside from her attention to his wings, a trick she intended to repeat tonight.) So to have all that attention on her, was more than a little overwhelming. She was already on overdrive when he pressed in, and instantly she was moaning and writhing and…

Welp. First time for everything. Aziraphale pulled back slightly, an astonished look on his angelic face.

“Did you just…?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Just from…?”

“Uh- _huh!_ ”

“...Oh dear, I’m in trouble.”

“ _You’re_ in trouble?”

The angel just laughed, and went about the business of proving exactly how much trouble they were both in.

***

Several hours later, thirst quenched, Aziraphale was tummy down on his feather bed, chin resting on his forearms, wings stretched up and slightly out. Beth, meanwhile, was straddled on his lower back, grooming those impeccable wings with careful fingers. Lining them up and soothing them, making them lay flat, gentling each vane in the right direction. And occasionally reaching down to massage his shoulders where the wings sat, careful not to press too hard.

It was only fair, he’d spent the last several hours praising her, and worshiping her with his body, and serving her, speaking her love language with astonishing fluency. It was only fair she return the favor.

Finally, he shivered all over, stretching his wings out of her grasp, and turned his head slightly.

“That’s...oh, my darling, that was wonderful.” Aziraphale translation: Okay, stop, overstimulation is happening. Beth just grinned brightly at him, and sat back as those wings folded in and disappeared. She got an after-image of hundreds of crystal blue eyes winking at her as they vanished, and she swayed a little with vertigo. But in a good way! Aziraphale rolled with her, and she found herself on her side, face to face with her angel, studying the depths of those blue eyes, every fleck of color memorized.

“So...what happened, exactly?” the angel whispered. Now that they’d gotten their ya-yas out, as it were, he wanted to talk.

“Well, should I start from the Beginning?”

“Don’t you dare,” he said with a smirk, hearing that capital B. “Cheeky.”

She giggled, and buried her face in his shoulder, trying to suss it all out, get it in the right order. Sure, she remembered everything, but she was still processing it all.

“Alright, so. Erm. I saw you two get kidnapped, and Gabriel grabbed me to stop me trying to help.”

“I knew it.” The angel had a frown on, and she raised her face just enough to gentle-kiss it away.

“Shush. No more interruptions from the peanut gallery,” she scolded, running a tender finger along the feathery slope of his eyebrow. Just the kind of soft, intimate touches that lovers do. “He told me you were going to be executed, and erased my memory of you. Erm, speaking of, how’d you two survive?”

Aziraphale got that cat in the cream smile again.

“We switched,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I took on his face, and he took on mine. When they put him in the holy water, it was actually me, and…”

“What?” She was absolutely stunned. And then she started going over her memory with a fine-tooth comb, and… “When did you switch?”

“That morning. Before Crowley woke you up with coffee.”

“But...wait, no, _you_ woke me up with...oh.” 

Look at Aziraphale, the smuggest angel on the entire planet, rolling onto his back and lacing his fingers behind his head. And then he turned to his human love and waggled his eyebrows.

And then Beth smacked his upper arm lightly.

“You git! You could have told me!”

“We… _I_ thought we couldn’t risk it. It might have been possible for one of the Host to...take it from your mind. I never dreamed that Gabriel would…”

He wasn’t smug anymore, that was certain. Beth melted a bit, and curled up into him, her lips finding his cheek. Aziraphale wrapped an arm around her back and just let himself live in this exact moment, holding her after so long.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, and she sat up a little, leaned over him with her arm propped up on the bed, safely triangulating him into submission.

“It’s not your fault, Aziraphale. It’s not. Please, let that go. I mean it. If there was anything to forgive, you’d have it immediately.”

“You are far kinder to me than I merit,” he murmured, remembering, and she smiled back, soft and warm.

“Bullshit,” was all she answered, and that got a laugh out of the angel. “So, the rest you know, I guess. Were you and Anathema in touch the whole time?”

“At least once a week. We were at your graduation ceremony today, dear lady.”

“...Oh, Aziraphale.”

That deserved another long kiss, which they both thoroughly indulged in. (He made the most amazing noises when he ate and when he fucked. It just wasn’t fair in the least.) When she finally pulled back, she was flushed and a little teary. He kissed her eyelids and rested his forehead against hers, tender and soft.

“Go on, my darling. What happened after you ran out of the shop?”

She took a deep breath, knowing this was going to make her angel fret.

“Well, I started to lose everything. I mean...everything, not just you and Crowley. It was like a domino effect. I don’t know why. But then...well, this old man asked if I needed help, and I said yes...and there She was.”

The expression on Aziraphale’s face was one of awe and quiet astonishment, and he nodded reverently. Now, onto the fretting bit.

“She gave me back my memories, and then...said that Gabriel wanted to speak with me.”

That expression of his quickly morphed into alarm, and he sat up, dislodging her from his chest with a gasp. And then he looked more angry than alarmed, but not at her.

“Oh, Beth! You didn’t mention that, are you alright? Oh, dear, I’ll never let him near you again, I’ll put an end to him if he…”

She reached up and put a gentle finger on his mouth to hush him.

“He apologized to me.”

“...You’re _fucking_ kidding me!”

Beth fell back onto the bed, gasping with laughter. Aziraphale didn’t join in. He looked unbelievably flustered, almost angry. In fact, he was up and pacing the bedroom floor, still utterly naked, wringing his hands together. That got Beth to stop laughing, and she sat up, curled her legs under her and watched him.

“He told Crowley to _my_ face that I should just, and I quote, ‘shut your stupid mouth, and die already!’”

Beth flinched.

“He’s such a tosser!” raged the angel, his face twisted in misery. “And where was She when all this was going on? Why did She talk to you and not me? Why…?”

Beth stood up firmly, and took his hands and stopped his mad pacing. Made him look at her.

“I don’t know. But I’m here. Maybe that was meant to be Her apology all along. But...Aziraphale, I know She loves you. She said as much, out loud. You and Crowley. And me. And all the angels and demons and humans and this beautiful planet. Don’t...don’t do this. You’ll just hurt yourself.”

He swallowed heavily, and closed his eyes. Nodded in agreement. With a tender hand, she reached up and twirled a spitcurl off his forehead, slicking it back and then cupping his face.

“I love you,” she whispered. “And we’re together. On our own side. If She weren’t okay with it, I wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation with you. Don’t ever forget that, love.”

“Right,” he whispered back, before opening his crystal blue eyes. “You know, no matter how long I live with humans, I’m always surprised by their grace. And you, dear lady, have more than most.”

“I’m a waitress from Clapham,” she reminded him. “I’m just that.”

“Exactly.”

***

“Tea?”

“That’d be lovely, thank you.”

She was dressed in his pajamas again, and he was...well, he was back in his full suit, tie, etc. Although instead of his coat, he was in a heather-gray jumper...with leather elbow patches. It was so middle-aged man it made her giggle. She could only make him unbend so much, apparently. They were sat in his kitchenette, surrounded again by that golden glow that suffused his shop. And when that angel-wing mug was put in front of her, she caressed those wings like they were his. Such a difference from a year...no, three years ago, ugh, she’d never really reconcile that lost time, not really. Three years since he saved her from a mugger and gave her his card and she’d come home.

“Can I tell you something else odd? About Gabriel?” she asked cautiously, knowing this was still a very sore subject.

“Hmm?” His lips were pursed tight together, before parting enough to sip his tea. She took that as permission.

“He said something in a weird language to me, as he walked away,” she said, hands cradling her mug, staring into the dark amber liquid like it had answers. “And then he said it was the meaning of my name. I’m still trying to suss that one out, honestly.”

Aziraphale cocked his head, and blinked, and then perfectly replicated the language that Gabriel had used with her, and she sucked a little breath in through her teeth. 

“Was that it?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Because I know what your name means,” he said with a little chuckle, as if he was astonished she didn’t. She stared at him, green eyes wide and mouth slightly open. The angel smiled gently back at her. “It’s Enochian,” was the explanation. “The language of angels. Directly translated, it means, ‘My God Is An Oath.’”

“ _What_?”

Aziraphale’s smile got warmer. “Didn’t you know? The etymology of Elizabeth. Derived from Hebrew, Elishiva. Come now, I showed you pictures of the Septuagint.”

“I was...I was named after my grandmother!” she protested, while her angel laughed. “I had no idea! Is that really what it means?”

Aziraphale nodded, still smiling that smug smile. Beth sat back in her chair, hands still cupping her mug of tea, and just let herself ponder all of that for a moment.

“...See, this is why I go by Beth,” she joked, and was delighted when Aziraphale nearly fell off his seat laughing.

***

It was late when they finally went back to bed, this time to sleep, and she curled around him, clung to him really. She’d never admit it out loud, but he was her favorite. Shh, don’t tell Anathema and Crowley. Speaking of, she was just about to drift off when she heard the front door open, and the bell ring. Half sitting up, Aziraphale just soothed her back down, and a moment later, Crowley was there, slipping into bed behind her.

“Your timing is impeccable, dear,” said the angel.

“Yeah, well, demon. We’re good at that.”

Beth just giggled as she drifted off between her lovers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I deliberately chose a brand other than Apple for her phone. Yes, I know the show gave Crowley an Apple, I'm just contrary.


	15. Chapter 15

_Epilogue._

“Ezra Jay Pulsifer, you get back here right now!” Anathema, already showing at just four months, was attempting to chase a dark-haired, blue-eyed toddler, who was doing his level best to drown himself in the duck pond at St. James park. Crowley just adjusted his hat and went after the rogue tyke.

“Naughty, naughty,” he scolded, his sensible skirt swishing as he scooped the boy over his shoulder. “Running from mummy and nanny gets little boys dropped in pits of boiling sulfur.”

Ezra thought that was hysterical, and laughed even as he tried to wriggle free. Newt took custody of his hellspawn, and could only hope that the next one was easier to handle. (Although it was a girl. And the girls on the Device side of the family had some...interesting tricks up their sleeves.)

And off to the side of this chaos, an angel and a speech therapist ate ice cream and watched their family.

“He really is a handful,” mused the angel.

“That’s putting it mildly,” said Beth, fond and maternal and soft. “And for once, I’m not to blame. They spoil him rotten.”

“Just Newt and Anathema?” he asked archly, giving her a look.

“...Alright, I spoil him too,” she conceded, grinning as Crowley dangled the boy upside down by one ankle. Ezra thought that was the best thing in the history of the world, judging by his piercing, shrieking laughter. “But you two? Spoil him worst of all.”

“It’s not every child that has a literal angel and demon as his godparents.” So what if Aziraphale miracled him up toys every visit? He was a growing boy, he needed stimulation for his developing brain!

“True, true. But the rocking horse was a bit much, love.” (It was a very fine rocking horse, although it did have a tendency to eat too many oats. Ezra had named it Book, which had caused Anathema to have a quiet fit in the next room.)

“I’ll endeavor to keep it to a reasonable level for the next one,” he said, his tone dry. Beth rolled her eyes at him.

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“And...still no news on your front?”

Beth just shrugged.

“I’m almost forty, love. Leaving it a bit late. And besides, I don’t want to upstage Anathema. Having two infants in the house at the same time? Lordy, no. But...I also think I’m just not able to...” She meshed her fingers together a couple of times, indicating something, even if she wasn’t really sure what.

“I could help the way with a miracle…?” the angel offered, and Beth just turned a sad, firm look on him.

“No.”

“Very well.”

They sat quietly for a long moment, both knowing exactly why Beth didn’t want that miracle to help her and Newt: She wanted to get up the duff by _Aziraphale,_ which was just completely impossible. There were stories about angels getting human women pregnant, and Beth had zero desire to have three men show up at her house with jewelry and incense. And going there with Crowley...well. The world had only _just_ dodged an Antichrist. She was fine being the second mum to Newt and Anathema’s children. They’d gotten married to each other some time back, in a quiet ceremony. Legally, Newt and Anathema were sharing the wedded bliss, while Beth was just a Very Good Family Friend™. But they all knew the truth, even if the UK wasn’t ready to issue polyamorous wedding certificates. (She had power of attorney for each of them individually, and their wills were ironclad. This was one family that wasn’t risking being torn apart by an earthly bureaucracy.)

“How are the Them?” the angel asked, deliberately moving on from the conversation, much to her relief.

“Well, they’re all discovering the joys of teenage hormones,” she said, rolling her eyes a bit. Apparently Adam’s declaration of people should kiss who they want, et. cetera, didn’t apply to the Them just yet, since he was trying to suss out his _own_ brain. (Wensleydale had stared non-existence down the barrel when Adam caught him kissing Pepper, and hadn’t flinched.)

“Oh, grand. So glad he gave up the power. Erm. Crowley and I are getting a cottage.” Aziraphale said that out of the blue, and Beth turned a surprised look on him.

“Really? Leaving London?”

“Well, a change is as good as a rest. We haven’t heard from either head office in nearly five years. We think it’s...permanent, this time. We’ll still keep the bookshop, naturally, but...yes, a cottage in the South Downs, we think.”

Aziraphale smiled. Beth smiled helplessly back. And then she closed her eyes, to keep from crying. Her family did that to her, after all. She reached over and took Aziraphale’s hand, and gripped it tightly.

“Oh, so now I have to drive to South Downs from Tadfield, thanks a lot.”

“You do, I’m afraid. It’s your home,” he murmured. “It will always be your home. You’re ours, remember?”

Beth was having just a _lovely_ afternoon.

THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, I did it. I finished a fic. I know, I'm just as shocked as you are.
> 
> Thanks for reading, everybody! Follow me on tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack.


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